Designasaurus II

Designasaurus II is an educational simulation game with action elements, playing in the far future. It enables you to create your own dinosaurs and then teleport them to different geological time periods, in the quest for hidden dinosaur geneprints.

The background story: in the year 2501, the renegade scientist Dr. Max von Fusion has stolen the Designasaurus Research Foundation's prized Gigantodon geneprints and hidden them in different geological time periods, leaving only a poem with some hints about their whereabouts. You play a researcher who goes on the quest for the hidden prints to recreate the fabulous Gigantodon, get millions of credits and get promoted to Chief Scientist.

The game consists of two parts. First, you select a dinosaur with which to go exploring. You can either select a predefined or create your own dinosaur, combining head, body, arms and tails of existing dinosaurs as you want. The combination of parts affects the dinosaur's attributes, like fighting skills or speed. Once you have created a dinosaur and given him a fancy name, you get the opportunity of printing it out before you go exploring.

You are now ready for exploration. Select a geological era and a climate and teleport your creature there. You now start the overhead action-adventure part where you have to try to find the Gigantodon's geneprints. Of course, there are other dinosaurs too -- depending on the period and climate. Upon meeting, you can either eat them (if they are small enough), mate with them (if they are of your species and the opposite sex) or fight them. Just like in real life, successful mating is the most complicated, as afterwards you have to defend the eggs and then feed the young.

You also have to keep an eye on your hunger, thirst and fatigue, so be sure to eat, drink and rest from time to time. At any time, you can save your game or teleport back to the foundation. This also happens automatically if your dinosaur is badly wounded, so you cannot lose in this game. Finally, you also get dinosaur facts displayed from time to time while exploring.

You get points for successful playing, especially for finding parts of the geneprints. Once you have found all parts, you are promoted to Chief Scientist and have won the game.