About ten years ago developer Studio Wildcard had a dream: Make one of those first-person open-world survival games that were all the rage, but absolutely load it up with cool dinosaurs. They did that in the form of ARK: Survival Evolved, which released into Early Access in 2015. The game garnered a positive reaction and earned itself a devoted group of fans during the next couple of years of Early Access, with the full release coming in August of 2017. The following June, much to the surprise of myself, ARK released on iOS. I found it incredible that such a huge game could work on mobile, and while it had some issues, it was a pretty full-featured version of the game that we picked for our Game of the Week back then.
A few months after that iOS version dropped, a port of ARK arrived for the Nintendo Switch and… well, that version was just a downright mess. A game like this running on mobile devices of the time was an impressive feat, and given that the Switch’s hardware was well behind then-modern mobile devices, it’s not too surprising the game struggled so hard on Nintendo’s hybrid handheld. To their credit Studio Wildcard set out to right that wrong, and partnered with Grove Street Games to create a more lightweight version of the game, which ended up being called ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition. Here’s the trailer for the Switch version of that game.
It may have taken several years, but ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition on Switch was a proper make good for the messy version that was originally released, and best of all it was released as a free update to owners of the original Switch version. In fact, the new Switch version is so much better we recently chose it as one of the 10 best survival games on the Switch. I guess all’s well that ends well! But it doesn’t end there, because today Studio Wildcard and Grove Street Games have announced that ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition is also heading to iOS and Android devices later this year.
Not only is ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition a more performant version of the game designed to run well on a broader range of hardware, but it will also includes the many expansions that have released for the base game over the years, including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Genesis Parts 1 & 2, the fan-favorite Ragnarok community-created map, and more. The game is slated for launch on iOS and Android “holiday 2024" and will initially include the ARK Island and Scorched Earth expansion, with later expansions releasing for the game throughout 2025. Seeing as the original mobile version of ARK: Survival Evolved is still on the App Store and even updated as recently as a couple years ago, I’m not sure if this will be an update to that existing version or a separate new release, but either way I’m excited to give ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition a go on mobile later this year.
