When we were offered code for Terrible Lizards I took one look at the Steam page, saw something about parkour and dinosaurs and agreed to review it without a second thought. I don’t know why, but that specific combination of elements just grabbed my attention. While my initial impressions of the game weren’t overly glowing, it very quickly turned into one of the most pleasant surprises of the year, stretching its unique concept across a thoroughly enjoyable six hours that I enjoyed far more than I’d expected.
You play Jordan, a young lad travelling along Route 66 when he gets into some car trouble and pulls in at a gas station opposite Dalton’s Dinos, a cheesy roadside attraction that feels part museum, part Chuck-e-Cheese. You spend the first hour roaming among the exhibits, looking at animatronic dinosaurs and feeling a general creeping sensation of dread as things take a dark turn with one of the attraction’s mascot characters.
This intro to the game actually undermines how enjoyable the story ends up being, as I was almost ready to write it off as another FNAF-style mascot horror game (which admittedly might have been a bit scary for my tastes), but the narrative very quickly snowballs into something much more interesting. There’s a great story about Dalton and his family that ties together a creepy childhood “imaginary friend”, a comically huge archaeological dig gone wrong and a shadowy agency in the background funding questionable research. It’s just a whole lot of fun, especially as the main narrative is doled out through full FMV sequences you find throughout the world, whether it’s a scientist lamenting the horrors they’ve uncovered or, my personal favourites, Dalton’s video diary as he looks for DJ, his son. They’re so camp and full of cheese and I happily sat and watched each one. My only minor complaint with the story was that the ending was a bit abrupt. It almost felt like there should have been a post-credits scene, and while I didn’t get one, I wonder if there’s anything linked to finding all the in-game collectibles that just adds a little sprinkle of intrigue at the end.
You spend the entire time in Jordan’s rather nimble shoes. Thankfully for a game centred on parkour he’s incredibly agile and slick to control. You sprint with almost no acceleration time and you’ve got full control of his movement and momentum when he’s in the air, which makes barrelling through the levels really responsive and satisfying. Movement is fairly simple, there are no advanced moves to unlock but opportunities for new movements do present themselves as the story proceeds, such as using bouncy surfaces or wall-running. The game strings these different movements together to make some very satisfying lines for you to run, and there are some really bombastic sequences throughout the entire game.
As a self-confessed horror wimp, I was grateful that Terrible Lizards generally makes it obvious when you’re in an area you might get eaten by a dinosaur. Some sections just require you to run through them, parkouring your way up or down through the world while others are more open for you to explore and complete puzzles. They’re never taxing, and usually just involve you finding a MacGuffin or two and bringing them to a certain point to use them so you can continue. However, if you land in an open area with lots of holes to slide under and both ground-level and elevated parkour routes then it’s safe to bet that a dinosaur is about to join you soon, so it’s worth getting the lay of the land so you don’t have to dawdle when they’re on your tail.
As mentioned earlier, I thought Terrible Lizards was a mascot horror game at first. The opening sequences tease you with a horribly creepy Dalton’s Dinos mascot stalking you, but that very quickly disappears and you find each chapter focuses on a single monstrous, misshapen dinosaur that stalks you periodically. I loved them; they’re scary when you know they’re hot on your heels but equally if you’re stood up in the rafters looking down you realise they’re actually a little goofy and silly, which took the edge off the more stressful sequences for me. Running around the open areas, ducking under shelves and clambering across walkways to avoid them is great fun, as are the more scripted sequences where they appear at the most inopportune moments.
My one main criticism of the gameplay is that Terrible Lizards is, at the time of writing, a bit buggy in places. It took a bit of tinkering to get the performance right on my Steam Machine, and even though I dialled the settings right down, I was still getting regular hitches despite my framerate generally being far higher than I needed it to be.
Additionally I had multiple instances where sequences just broke, and I had to exit the game and reload before they worked as intended. These were usually chase sequences where Jordan is so agile that it’s easy to get ahead of the scripting, and I found I’d end up in areas where my movement wasn’t quite right or things weren’t triggering correctly.
Despite the issues with performance I really enjoyed the way Terrible Lizards looks, and everything is dripping in 90s cheese, from Dalton’s Dinos itself through to the silly spinning 3D WordArt screensavers on all the computers. It feels like the sort of place you’d genuinely see by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. The dinosaur designs are great too, and while the species are recognisable, they’re deformed versions that get a narrative explanation later in the game. Acting is on point too, from the aforementioned FMV scenes through to the general chatter between Jordan and Stella on the phone as they discuss the increasingly bizarre events unfolding.
I loved Terrible Lizards far more than I was expecting. The horror is pitched perfectly for my tastes and the balls-to-the-wall parkour is exactly my style of platforming. It’s unfortunately a bit buggy in places, but regardless it’s carved itself a very unique place in the genre and lovers of cheesy horror will be in heaven here.
