A few months ago, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw a post from voice actress Katy Bentz that she was joining the cast of a game called Terrible Lizards. Being a fan of Katy’s and rather perplexed by what kind of game would have this title, I decided to check it out. The first trailer hooked me so much that I knew that this game was going to be a fun adventure in an unusual horror setting. What about this game got me so excited about this video game? Let’s dive into the details.

For those who don’t know, Terrible Lizards is a horror parkour survival game where you must survive the wrong night at the wrong museum. You play as a hapless college student named (name), who decides to explore Dalton’s Dinos while waiting for his car to be towed from across the street. From the outside, Dalton’s Dinos seems to be just a run-of-the-mill museum that has seen better days.

That proves to be quite the understatement as Dalton, the owner of the museum, has dug something quite sinister from the dig site below the museum, and that something is running loose. As you run for your life, you must rely on your radio guide to combat these forgotten creatures and find a way out. Time and fortune will determine if you will survive the night or become another forgotten part of this museum.

Before I hopped into the full game, I played the demo that was released to the public a few weeks ago. With how the demo is put together, I assumed that the first stage presented there would be the exact same as in the base game. However, this was not the case, as the overall layout is extremely different from what we have in the demo compared to the full game.

I am not sure if the demo is simply an earlier build before a lot of the voice work and storyboarding was done or if the developers purposely made two separate level designs for each version. Beyond that, it is the same for the most part. The only difference that I noticed is that the jumping distance for the main character was not as aggressive, which made things feel a bit more controlled.

The game is rather clean, with only two noticeable bugs that I encountered. The first involves the plushies. These are collectibles that you find on each stage and go towards an achievement in the game. The plushies are hidden in the levels, and you are supposed to deliver them to a platform located around the end of the map.

For some reason, the plushies would never show up in my inventory, and there would be no option to place the ones I found on their respective platform. The second bug I ran into was the fall height, more specifically, the death height. Early on in my playthrough, I missed a jump and ended up dying to fall damage. Later on, I had a similar incident, from what I believe to be a greater height, and didn’t die. This confused me a bit, and I am still not sure what the reason is for the discrepancy. It is certainly not the biggest glitch, but it is an odd one.

Considering that this is a horror game, one would hope to have a few good spooks or at least a good atmosphere to build tension. While there were a few moments that got me, I would put this in the camp of games like Five Nights at Freddy’s and movies like Buddy in terms of tone. There is a lot of campiness to what goes on in this game, and that is what makes it stand out. It takes inspiration from a lot of places, but never falls into the trap of wholly replicating any other project. Terrible Lizards is a very unique game that will appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, but may not to horror players looking for a game with the feel of Silent Hill.

The campiness of this title is seen throughout the entire game, but it works for it, as it seems to be trying its best to emulate a cheesy 90s horror flick in the form of a video game. Overall, I believe that this is a game that is worth your time as it is a fun adventure, even if it won’t scare you senseless. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this review! If you are looking for more horrifying offerings this spooky month, consider checking out my review of Hollowbody right here.

A PC review copy of Terrible Lizards was provided by WDR Studios for this review.

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Terrible Lizards

$24.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Quirky Horror Story
• Fantastic Voice Cast
• Great Parkour Mechanics
• 90s Vibes That Work

Cons

• Some Bugs
• Few Scares