Prehistoric Pack
Position: Systems Designer
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Date: January 2026 – Present
Prehistoric Pack is a dinosaur based autobattler where you rip card packs to obtain dinosaurs. By untilizing synergies between dinosaurs, craft and grow a team of dinosaurs to conquer stronger and stronger enemies. As I was onboarded onto the project about halfway through development, my main task was revamping the mark system. Marks are items you can pull from card packs that, when played on a dino, grant a one-time buff. They were very simple in their current state, so it was my job to go through and increase their strategic depth and make their allocation a tougher choice from the player.
The biggest way I did this was a new mechanic, being “End of Shop” triggers. Instead of immediately playing these marks on a dinosaur, the player can instead keep them in their pen and, upon entering the battle scene, would trigger a teamwide effect. Not only does this give the player a choice in which effect to utilize, but because the mark cannot be saved for future rounds like other marks can, forcing the player to make that choice quickly. An example of a mark like this is the “Mark of the Hunters,” which can either greatly boost a single dino’s attack, or slightly boost the attack and health of all carnivorous dinos. Another mark that emphasizes choice is my personal favorite, the “Mark of the Apex.” This mark can be played on a dino to give it an immediate stat boost, or sacrificed to an altar to give the entire team a buff. However, the latter effect also drains all of your Apex Force, a powerful lategame resource, making it an intersting choice between safely powering up one dino, or sacrificing a resource to buff all of them.
My time with Prehistoric Pack is genuinely one of the highlights of my game design career so far, as I learned a lot from it and had a blast working on it. Since this was only my second time being onboarded to work on a pre-existing game, I honestly found myself quite nervous to make any large changes to the game at first. However, after I gained ownership of the marks, I felt extremely empowered to shake up the design of the game and make some really cool effects — ones that ended up being very well recieved by the team and players. It was also my first time working on a strategy game (my favorite genre) with a larger team, and the process of balancing my own work with the systems other people are working on an constantly balancing was a great learning experience.
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