Ark: Survival Evolved is coming to Android smartphones and tablets next week, studio Wildcard revealed, having scheduled the new mobile game for a release on Thursday, June 14. Originally announced in March, the handset version of the 2017 survival experience promises to be a faithful recreation of the original, offering a large open world filled with more than 80 dinosaur species which you can fight, tame, ride, and even breed, in addition to a broad range of other primeval creatures. As is the case with most other games in the genre, Ark: Survival Evolved places a large focus on crafting and building shelters which will help you survive in its dynamically changing world.
Multiplayer is also part of the package, as is a tribal system which is basically how Wildcard refers to its take on guilds. Ark: Survival Evolved will hit the Google Play Store and iOS App Store as a free-to-play game with no hard paywalls, with the developers behind the title promising that even its digital currency will be relatively easy to earn by simply playing the Android game. Those who want to support the title in exchange for some in-game help will be able to opt for a subscription that will set them back $3.99 per month or $34.99 a year, with that service providing them with a permanent XP buff which will make them level up twice as fast, guarantee them priority slots on servers, and remove all ads from the experience. Some special events and dedicated servers are also said to be part of the package but Wildcard has yet to share more details on the matter.
Ark: Survival Evolved is likely to be a relatively hardware-demanding game, though it remains to be seen whether it ends up shipping with some in-depth graphical settings that would allow owners of non-flagship devices to run it at a stable frame rate while sacrificing some visual fidelity. The Ark franchise is presently also in the process of expanding to VR, whereas another dinosaur-centric mobile game recently hit the Google Play Store in the form of Jurassic World Alive.