Jurassic War is an RTS set in prehistoric times that includes RPG elements. It is reminiscent of Warcraft, both in graphics and the units' movement and control.

At the beginning of the game you have to choose among several tribes. Each of them has got "simple men" (not just workers like in other games as they can evolve here), and then each tribe slightly differs with regard to most advanced kinds of units, such as "magicians" and the like.

The RPG addition comes with experience: every time an unit of yours has killed something (be it an animal hunted for the only resource of the game, that is food, or be it an opponent unit) it earns this kind of experience you can see in the form of bars in the upper-right corner of the screen (when the unit is selected). Each unit has got these six bars showing its velocity, its light radius, its magic power, and so on. You can also choose to boost some of these bars only, that is they will fill up faster but at the cost of no progress for the other ones.

Then the six bars are summed up in one only bar located at the top of each unit, and whose colour represents that unit overall strength. White is the highest level/colour units can reach. The most frequent white-barred animals you will encounter in the game are Tyrannousaurus-like dinosaurs. You need a lot of training with high-level monsters to have your units become that strong. Obviously also animals earn experience, and this happen only when you die fighting them, because they don't attack themselves.

The goal of the game is the same of almost every other RTS - that is killing the opponent units and getting rid of their presence on the map.