I Need to Tell You All About "Terrible Lizards"

What Are Terrible Lizards?

Terrible Lizards. I thought that was a pretty on-the-nose name for a dinosaur horror game when I first saw the teaser trailer months ago.

On the surface, the name tells us quite simply: If you play this game, you will be facing some pretty terrifying-looking prehistoric lizards. Just look at the picture displayed above. That's one ugly dilophosaurus.

But then you dive a little deeper.

If you're a dinosaur nerd like me, you know the word "dinosaur," quite literally translates to "terrifying lizard." The term was originally coined by early 19th century paleontologist Richard Owens. He proposed the name "Dinosauria," to establish a distinct sub-order of extinct reptiles. Fossils unearthed by Owens and other paleontologists during this time period were believed to be reptilian in nature, yet they were massive compared to modern-day reptiles.

Owens wanted to create a name to group all of these large-than-life reptilian fossils together. To do this, he combined two Greek words: deinos, meaning "horrible," or "fearsome," and sauros, meaning "lizard," or "reptile."

Thus, the word "dinosaur," emerged. A term created by a scientist to establish a group of prehistoric lizards that we now know were not lizards at all. Dinosaurs were much more closely related to modern crocodiles and birds rather than lizards.

So thinking back, now that I've experienced the game in its entirety, the name Terrible Lizards makes perfect sense.

Based on the teaser trailer alone, it's similar to any other dinosaur horror game out there. It's got all the classic hallmarks: Lots of blood and gore, carnivorous foes stalking you throughout the game and jump scares galore.

But just as The Game Theorists will tell you, not everything is quite as it seems when it comes to Terrible Lizards. See their take on the game below if you're curious.

Similar to Richard Owens' discoveries in the 1840s, as you play Terrible Lizards, you will unearth some pretty bizarre and unexplainable things the deeper you go. However, some things are meant to stay buried.

Setting the Stage

Terrible Lizards takes place in 1992.

A first-person horror game, you play as Jordan, a college student whose car breaks down while passing through New Mexico along Route 66. Jordan leaves his car parked at a gas station and decides to seek help at a nearby dinosaur roadside attraction and museum known as "Dalton's Dinos."

As soon as Jordan enters the attraction, it is obvious things seem off. There are no staff members to be seen, lights flicker as we explore the space, even the front door is left unlocked. Sure, it's still daytime when Jordan arrives, so maybe the place is open! It would make sense for the front door to be left unlocked then, right?

But with little to no cars in the parking lot and not a single human being in sight, Dalton's Dinos feels pretty surreal. Maybe even abandoned.

What happened to everyone? Well, that's a question for a little later.

As we continue to explore the attraction and look for any staff who could help Jordan with his car, we learn more about Dalton's Dinos and its history. One of the unique aspects of Terrible Lizards is that it does not focus solely on survival horror and puzzle-solving. It also incorporates parkour into gameplay. This allows the player to interact with almost everything they encounter. We can climb up onto the exhibits, we can pick up most objects, scale certain walls, jump onto high surfaces, the list goes on and on.

So uncovering game lore and secrets before we have even encountered a person or a dinosaur becomes a fun, yet high-stakes scavenger hunt.

By interacting with dinosaur-themed displays, picking up video tapes and restoring power to certain areas of the attraction so we can view pre-recorded videos meant for tourists to experience as they move through the exhibits, we get a pretty cool introduction to Dalton's Dinos' history.

We learn that the attraction was originally established in 1981 by a paleontologist named Dalton Coolidge. He, along with his scientist wife Elena and their young son Dalton Jr. (who is referred to as "DJ," throughout the game) created the roadside attraction after discovering a massive underground deposit of fossils from the Jurassic Period. To the family's elation, especially Dalton's, buried in the deposit were extremely well-preserved brontosaurus, allosaurus and dilophosaurus fossils.

Important to keep those three dinosaur species in mind.

First Tastes of Terror

Finally, after wandering around the museum for awhile, we stumble across what we think is a staff member. Whoever it is barely acknowledges us from across the room. They are wearing a tattered mascot outfit, struggling to walk and puking up some sort of strange, black sludge. As Jordan, we call out to them, but they don't respond, eventually just walking away and leaving a gross, tar-like puddle behind.

Shortly after the mascot guy wanders off, we hear a phone ringing from a small room labelled "employees only." We answer it and speak with a woman named Stella Banks, who is clearly an upper staff member at Dalton's Dinos. After letting her know we don't work here and we haven't seen anyone around but the mascot guy, Stella urges us to find Dalton, who she claims should be in the management office by the gift shop. We also pick up a headset, which allows us to call Stella and receive calls from her to help guide us through important puzzles and different areas throughout the rest of the game.

As we start making our way toward the management office, we continue to find peculiar clues as to why Dalton's Dinos seems suddenly abandoned.

We find tape recordings from Dalton and his wife Elena. In Dalton's recordings, he talks a lot about the future, expanding Dalton's Dinos and becoming even more successful. In Elena's, we hear about the tension starting to emerge in their marriage, her concerns about Dalton's obsessive ambition and her worries over their son DJ, who is often neglected by Dalton and talks a lot about an imaginary friend named Dennis.

We also find tape recordings from Stella, who we come to find out is not only Dalton's colleague, but also a trusted friend of his. In her recordings, she talks about putting new safety measures in place to keep the staff safe and help contain... Something. Something alive that she says has "evolved to tolerate low light," so the installation of floodlights to be run 24 hours a day is essential.

And then of course, there are hand-written notes left all over the place by staff clearly expressing concerns over strange happenings at Dalton's Dinos.

Keeping all of this in mind, we finally find the management office near the gift shop. There, we play a tape on a small TV set and get our first taste of some truly unsettling information about what has been going on here and why everyone has disappeared.

The first few seconds of the tape show us grainy footage of a large creature either sleeping or lying dormant in what looks like some kind of cavern. We can only assume this cavern is part of the underground fossil site. There is a voiceover of Stella speaking over this footage, describing how the creature has remained dormant and her and the team have kept their distance.

Then, the tape cuts out for a moment. When the static clears, we see Dalton on the screen standing in the management office with a panicked look on his face. He explains how everyone is gone, no one from the fossil site is answering their radios and some kind of creature took his son DJ. He addresses his wife Elena, telling her how sorry he is and warning her not to come to the dig site. The footage ends with Dalton telling his wife that he is going down into the caves after the creature to find their son.

Panicked too now, Jordan calls Stella and explains what he has just heard and witnessed. Stella is clearly taken aback, seemingly unaware up until now of just how dire the situation at Dalton's Dinos has become. She tells us to restore power to the floodlights in the gift shop to keep ourselves safe. While we get to work on that, the creature from the footage makes its entrance, breaking into the gift shop.

While it resembles a brontosaurus, it is more serpentine and skeletal, almost slithering along the ground instead of walking. It is aggressive, attacking and destroying the floodlights as we try to restore them. By the time we get out of the gift shop and away from the creature, we find ourselves below ground.

Our new objective: Find a way back to the surface.

The Underground Dig Sites

Now stuck in the caverns, we call Stella and learn we will have to go deeper into the caves to get back out.

As we look for more clues as to where all the staff who were working underground went, we also solve various puzzles that cleverly utilize the parkour aspect of the game to keep things moving at a steady pace while unlocking new areas.

We continue finding notes from different staff members expressing their fear and growing paranoia working in the caves. Some notes mention people seeing glowing eyes staring back at them in the darkness, or shadows moving impossibly fast. There's evidence of small groups of staff members camping out in hidden areas of the caves, clearly trying to keep a low profile and survive.

We even find a recording of a group of people who were clearly attacked by some kind of creature, their screams drowned out by the sound of echoing roars and crumbling rocks.

A note left to Stella by one of the workers in the wake of the nightmare unfolding at Dalton's Dinos confirms that while floodlights were installed and containment measures were put in place, the creatures still posed a serious threat. Ultimately, whatever these strange, dinosaur-like monsters are, they are anything but docile. And by the time the underground crews figured that out, it was too late.

After Jordan finds all of this evidence, one thing becomes clear: While the mutated brontosaurus from the gift shop has left us alone for the time being, we are still nowhere near safe in these caves. There could be other creatures lurking, hunting us in the darkness. And we don't want to end up like the workers who disappeared in these caves.

The Broker

While exploring the caves, in addition to finding evidence of the carnage that took place, we also find multiple recordings from Dalton and a mysterious person known simply as "The Broker."

At the beginning of the game when we were still above ground, we had found a few notes and recordings from Dalton expressing his excitement for the future. In one note, he mentions a British gentleman he met at a business conference in New York who he plans to do business with. It is clear whoever this person is is more than willing to pour money into the Dalton's Dinos empire as long as Dalton delivers. Delivers what exactly?

Well, we learn from the recordings found in the caves that Dalton was keeping The Broker well-informed about the more secretive excavations happening deeper underground, at the "deep sites," as Stella calls them. We also learn Dalton apparently was not delivering as expected. A recording from Dalton in the deep sites tells us that him and his team were not meeting quota and he was starting to "feel the squeeze." A recording from The Broker himself warns Dalton that the nature of their business relationship would have to change if he failed to meet quota soon.

All of this leads to one main conclusion: Dalton more than likely was threatened by The Broker, so safety protocols were ignored, the team was pushed harder and harder, and eventually, disaster struck. Disaster in the form of living, breathing dinosaurs lurking in the underground sites.

While none of the recordings clearly state what The Broker wanted Dalton to deliver, we can infer that whatever it is, it has nothing to do with fossils or paleontology.

The Monsters Are Closing In

Jordan encounters hurdle after hurdle trying to reach the surface again. Equipment keeps breaking, the Brontosaurus emerges repeatedly to chase us and to top it all off, we start to find evidence and catch glimpses of other dinosaurs in the caves watching our every move.

This is at about the halfway point of the game. We have caught a glimpse of a dilophosaurus-like creature above us on a ledge that quickly darts away. And we are forced to hide behind a fence to avoid making eye contact with a large, allosaurus-like creature as well.

Now that we are alerted to their presence in the cave with us, it doesn't take long for us to find out just how deadly these other creatures are.

Not too long after we are forced to hide from the allosaurus ourselves, we hear a voice up ahead. We encounter a worker named Sid wandering around alone across a deep crevice. Our conversation with Sid is brief, cut short by the allosaurus. Before our very eyes, it stalks over to Sid and devours him whole. The entire scene feels deliberate. The allosaurus knew we were watching. It wanted to show us just what it is capable of doing if it ever catches up to us. It sent a message: We are running out of time to escape.

The Black Goo

While we do our best to avoid both the dilophosaurus and the allosaurus, we uncover more clues as to what Dalton and his crew were struggling to deliver to The Broker while they excavated the deep sites.

We find a note titled the "Motherlode Discovery," which talks about canisters being shipped out to "wherever their final destination is." As we go deeper, we discover a massive mining site filled with metal canisters we can only assume are the same ones described in the note. When we call Stella to help guide us through this new area, she confirms the canisters contain a substance Dalton and the crew discovered in the deep sites. And once that discovery was made, she says Dalton and "a shadow broker" went all in.

Finally, pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together.

The notes about this mysterious substance continue to pile up, each weirder than the last. There are notes that refer to the substance's ability to assist us with our parkour at certain points in the game, allowing us to jump on it to reach high places and stick to it to run across walls. We find a note talking about the substance "expanding beyond the extraction zones," like it is a living thing trying to escape containment.

Almost sounds like a dinosaur escaping from Jurassic Park, no?

Circling back to the mascot guy for a moment, he was throwing up a tar-like black goo when we first encountered him. Upon entering the caves after being chased by the Brontosaurus, we even find an empty mascot suit, covered in the black goo and missing its wearer.

Whatever this substance is, it is playing a major role in the deadly events unfolding at this unassuming roadside attraction.

Dalton's Death

The allosaurus starts to appear more and more often as it becomes ever clearer we are reaching the deepest parts of the dig sites Dalton and his crew were excavating. Whether the allosaurus is actively trying to hinder us from moving forward, or it is simply hungry, it is now intent to stop us at every possible turn, emerging to chase us when we least expect it.

We also start finding notes from workers specifically about close encounters with the allosaurus. In one note, a crew member watched a friend of his get eaten, much like Jordan did when the allosaurus snuck up behind Sid.

To top it all off, we stumble upon Dalton's things, including his backpack, one of his shoes and a tape, covered in what we can only assume is his blood. We play the tape and our fears are realized.

We see footage of Dalton running through the caves as the roars of the allosaurus echo off the walls. He tells us he doesn't think he will be able to get away this time. The allosaurus appears in front of him and he is knocked to the ground. Hurt and unable to stand back up, a claw reaches for him from behind the camera, stabbing him and dragging him away into the darkness. Tragically, Dalton is killed before he can find his son DJ.

It's not long before the allosaurus finds us again too. With Dalton's demise fresh on our mind, we struggle to escape the massive theropod once more.

As we sprint away from it, the terrain around us starts to change. The walls start to resemble the traces of black goo we have seen previously. Glowing plant life begins to emerge around us, like something out of Avatar. With the allosaurus right on our tail, we are chased into the deepest part of the cave, perhaps where none of the workers have even ventured before. And we quickly become completely surrounded by the strange, black goo.

As disconcerting as this new environment is, there is one plus. By some miracle, the allosaurus becomes hopelessly buried in the goo and finally, we get to walk away and leave it behind. Seemingly for dead.

Project Pilgrim

Now in a new area that really doesn't resemble a cave, more like another planet, we no longer have radio contact with Stella due to our depth below ground. We also have a new problem on our hands: The dilophosaurus.

Shortly after escaping the allosaurus, we are forced to run away from the dilophosaurus, which is faster and even stranger-looking than any of the other creatures we have encountered. Unlike the brontosaurus and the allosaurus, the dilophosaurus almost looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a human being. Its neck is too short, its arms are too long.

Even at the climax of the chase sequence, another unique physical trait is revealed: When the dilophosaurus opens its mouth to roar just a couple feet away from us, we can clearly see a human face emerge in the back of its throat, like a human being has somehow become a part of the creature. Maybe this has something to do with the black goo?

Just as we think the dino-human hybrid is about to take a bite out of us, we hear a child's voice call out, "Dennis? Where are you?" The dilophosaurus runs toward the voice and out of sight. Apparently, this hybrid creature is in fact Dennis.

Captions that appear at the bottom of the screen during sections of dialogue throughout the game also reveal that the child's voice we hear belongs to DJ, Dalton and Elena's missing son. Now at least we know he is still alive.

After parting ways with Dennis for the time being, Jordan finds himself in a large, dark cavernous area. The walls are completely covered in the black goo, strange bugs buzz about, glowing plants and fungi grow providing some light as we explore.

But what sticks out the most about this area is the equipment scattered throughout: Vehicles, tents, cots, research materials. And none of it looks like its belongs to the Dalton's Dinos crew. This equipment looks significantly older. Some of it even looks military.

Our suspicions are confirmed when we find a note left behind by someone named Dr. Jane Hicks. The note is titled "Research Report - 14 Dec. 1949." This note is 43 years old. It was written 43 years before Jordan finds himself lost in these caves. And 32 years before Dalton and his family founded Dalton's Dinos. What on earth were scientists and military personnel doing down here all those years ago?

Not long after finding this note, we find an old projector.

We get it to work and it starts playing a grainy video. A man named Dr. Jonathan Fellows appears on the projector screen (played by Matthew Patrick, or "PatPat," oddly enough). He introduces himself as the head of scientific research here at "Project Pilgrim." He talks about everyone, all of the scientists, being excited about this new discovery. He describes how the military has been "thorough," which is an interesting choice of words. And at the end of the video, he holds up a vial of what looks like the same black goo we have been seeing over and over again throughout the game. He describes the substance in the vial as tar-like, with some sort of organic properties.

VERY interesting that Dr. Fellows would guess it has organic properties. This brings us back to one of the notes we found earlier, when some of the Dalton's Dinos staff reported that the goo seemed to be expanding beyond extraction areas. More than once people have inferred that the goo might be alive somehow. This can't be a coincidence.

Dr. Fellows clearly has mixed feelings about this expedition. He explains that the black goo is "pervasive," in this area. The word "pervasive," is often used to describe something that exists everywhere, or is spread throughout every part of something else. Something that feels inescapable. And the military presence around him feels more authoritative than it does protective or reassuring.

Whatever this 1940s/1950s project was, this "Project Pilgrim," it is safe to assume it was a classified military operation rather than a research expedition in the name of science and discovery. The timing makes sense: Based on the note we found dated 1949, Project Pilgrim would have begun just a few years after the conclusion of World War II. This would be right at the start of the Cold War, when U.S. concerns over civil defense were still very high.

Perhaps the military saw an opportunity when the black goo was discovered. According to all the notes and tapes we uncovered throughout the game from both the Dalton's Dinos crew and the Project Pilgrim crew, the goo is highly versatile. It is able to shift between sticky, solid, elastic and adhesive states with ease. It is also highly resilient and adaptive. It is able to expand and overtake entire areas, especially in low-light conditions, and it is resistant to almost all chemical agents, so it is very difficult to destroy. No doubt the military was interested in the goo.

But going back to the point Dr. Fellows made about the goo's organic properties, I don't think the scientists or the military had any idea what the goo was capable of. Whether they realized it too late or were in complete denial (like Dalton was), hoping to extract as much of the goo as possible despite the risks, they were doomed from the moment they unearthed the first trace of the black sludge.

The black goo doesn't just possess organic properties. What many game fans and theorists now believe is that the goo is in fact a sentient, living organism. An organism that might even have extra-terrestrial origins.

Dennis & the Other Mutated Creatures

At this point in the game, Dennis is the only dinosaur creature left to face. As we continue to search for DJ, we continue finding notes from scientists and military personnel alike about Project Pilgrim. The peculiar thing is most of these notes talk about encounters with a creature that sounds an awful lot like Dennis. Could the Project Pilgrim crew have been fighting back against the very same creature we are now running from as Jordan decades later?

Furthermore, if it is the same creature, where on earth did Dennis and the other mutated monsters like the brontosaurus and the allosaurus come from?

The answer is pretty simply, but also terrifying.

Based on everything we know about the black goo, its behavior and its pervasiveness throughout the cave systems we've explored as Jordan, we can safely assume it is the culprit behind these prehistoric beasts coming back from extinction. But as Dalton pointed out in a tape recording earlier in the game about the brontosaurus, and as I pointed out when describing Dennis, these "dinosaurs," are not scientifically accurate.

The brontosaurus had a long neck and long tail, but that was the extent of its accurate physical features. Its legs were far too short, it had bones protruding from the back of its head, neck and back. And above all, it was highly aggressive, in stark contrast to the docile, herbivorous gentle giant depicted in textbooks. The allosaurus looked like a theropod, but its mouth opened far too wide, so much so that at certain points in the game, it looked like its bottom jaw might detach. And then of course there's Dennis, which really has no accurate physical traits when compared to recreations of dilophosaurus skeletons built by modern paleontologists.

The running theory behind the strange appearance of these revived creatures is this: The black goo interacted with the fossils in the dig site, reanimated them and turned them into living monsters. These creatures are not dinosaurs at all. Instead, they are mutated versions of dinosaurs the goo recreated, loosely basing the recreations on the fossils' genetic makeup. Like a liquid taking the shape of its container, the goo interacts with and takes the form of whatever organic matter it can find.

This could explain why Dennis looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a human. I believe a member of the Project Pilgrim crew was infected by the goo. And since we know there were fossils present in this underground area while Project Pilgrim was underway, I think the goo combined the DNA of a living person with the DNA of a dilophosaurus left embedded in the dinosaur fossils. The fact that Dennis is DJ's not-so-imaginary friend supports the theory that Dennis is partially human, maybe even more human than dinosaur if the two of them can communicate with each other.

The goo's ability to potentially infect living people also points to the conclusion that whoever was in the mascot suit at the beginning of the game succumbed to the goo. At first, we see them puking up the goo and acting sickly, stumbling around the exhibits and seemingly unaware of their surroundings. Later, we are forced to run away from them repeatedly as they start to display aggression towards us. And finally, when we are chased underground by the brontosaurus, we find the empty mascot suit, which has been completely overtaken by the goo. Whether the person wearing the suit is alive, dead, or now a part of the sentient goo we aren't sure. In any case, seems like a pretty grizzly fate.

Rescuing DJ

As we start to uncover the deeper mystery behind all of the chaos and bloodshed we've experienced as Jordan, we finally spot a glimmer of hope.

We find DJ sitting in one of the military tents. He is unhurt and just seems sad and lonely. He tells us he has been waiting for his father and that if he tries to leave, Dennis will just bring him back. Jordan is tasked with finding an allosaurus tooth Dennis took from DJ before we can rescue him and escape to the surface. Finding the tooth means venturing into Dennis' lair.

We leave DJ behind to search for the tooth and end up finding another recorded video from Dr. Fellows. What he says in this video supports the theory that the mysterious goo is not just sentient, but it is also extra-terrestrial, or alien, in nature.

Dr. Fellows explains how nothing he and the rest of the researchers are finding down in these caves makes sense. Frustrated and obviously scared, he alludes to some sort of "ancient impact," or "foreign injection," or "deep time contamination," potentially occurring. Each of these terms points to the theory that something "not of planet Earth" was introduced somewhere in the distant past, resulting in the goo-infested, subterranean environment he and the other researchers now find themselves in.

"Ancient impact," often refers to impacts from asteroids or meteorites in Earth's geological history. Makes sense, since we're talking about dinosaurs. "Foreign injection," in cosmology could refer to more speculative theories about energy or matter leaking into our universe from a parallel universe or dimension. This fits the situation too, who knows where the goo originates from? Could it be from a different dimension? And "deep time contamination," which based on what I could find while researching the term, could refer to two separate concepts: Deep time, which explores cosmic and geological timescales (the cosmic timescale is significantly longer than Earth's geological timescale), and contamination, which explores biological and/or material contamination in space exploration. Another solid idea.

All three theories could fit the situation. All three theories combined could explain the history and origins of the goo. But they're still just theories, and Dr. Fellows is out of ideas. He ends the video and leaves us with one final message. Whatever the goo is, it should have been left alone.

That message hangs in the air for just a moment, interrupted by Dennis, who attacks and chases us into his lair. Thankfully, it doesn't take us long to find the tooth and escape his clutches once more. Only one thing left to do now: Find DJ again and get the hell outta here!

The Conclusion

While on our way to reunite with DJ, we find more notes from the Project Pilgrim crew, from scientists and military personnel alike. Most of them are letters to home, talking about how they miss sunlight and hope to see their loved ones soon. But one note in particular sticks out.

It is a note from one of the researchers known as Dr. Jensen, writing to Commander Ridgewater, who is the leader on the military side of Project Pilgrim. In the note, Dr. Jensen talks about a specific and obscure spectrum of light that is able to repel the black goo. He further explains how he plans to fabricate filters for the lights around the Project Pilgrim encampment to protect everyone involved from the goo and the mutated creatures.

Another glimmer of hope: The goo actually has a weakness.

We locate DJ once more, giving him back the allosaurus tooth. Dennis isn't far behind, so getting the rigged lights up and running again becomes our next goal. With Dennis right on our heels, we sprint around the encampment flipping switches. It doesn't take us long to get the lights back on, which give off a strange pinkish purple hue, and the goo that had started to invade the tents and vehicles starts to burn away. And Dennis disappears once more.

Safe for the time being in the now well-lit Project Pilgrim base of operations, a projector clicks on nearby, showing us one last video from our friend Dr. Fellows.

In the video, Dr. Fellows looks disheveled. His lab coat is dirty and bloodied, the lights in the foreground flicker and a large claw mark can be seen on the wall behind him. Exhausted and defeated, he tells us the base can't hold anymore—that the monsters, which have taken the shape of dinosaurs, are starting to get through. And he laments that he and a handful of others, including Commander Ridgewater, have made the impossible decision to cut off everyone and everything involved with Project Pilgrim from the surface to prevent the goo and the monsters from ever escaping.

Dr. Fellows ends the video telling us how sorry he is and that he plans to take the key to the lift, the only way to the surface, to a hidden location to keep it safe for as long as possible. Tragically, we do find his remains, completely entombed in the black goo, with the key to the lift and a note titled "Fellows' Last Words," beside him.

We take the key from Dr. Fellows and surprise, surprise, we run into Dennis again. By the end of the chase, Dennis has lost sight of us and we gain the advantage. We use a long piece of metal suspended in the air by a crane to swing into Dennis from behind, sending him over the edge of a cliff. He's probably dead now, right? RIGHT?!

Jordan meets back up with DJ, and using the key from Dr. Fellows, gets the lift running again. As we start making our way back up to the surface, Dennis drops in from out of nowhere, pushing Jordan off the lift and back to the ground below. Now ladies and gentlemen, we've reached the final chase sequence. Using the parkour skills we have practiced throughout the game, we enter the ultimate race against Dennis to catch back up to the steadily rising lift and escape this subterranean pit of prehistoric despair.

Once we reach the lift again, we jump on, but Dennis is not giving up that easily. He jumps on too, slashing at us with his claws, trying to pull us back off the lift and into the darkness. Using what's left of our strength, we kick Dennis directly in the human face protruding from the back of his throat, and he careens off the lift and back down in the caverns below. Finally, he is gone.

The game ends with DJ and Jordan making it back to the surface where Stella, who DJ lovingly calls "Auntie Stella," is waiting for them in her car. The trio makes it home safe, the ancient, sharp-toothed terrors behind them.

Final Thoughts

Terrible Lizards is awesome.

The entire game can be completed in about four to eight hours, depending on how fast you complete the puzzles and parkour/chase sequences. It combines well-executed animation and live-action footage to create an experience that pulls you right into the prehistoric horror and intrigue.

And of course, if you love dinosaurs like I do, the nostalgia and whimsy that the Dalton's Dinos aspect of the game brings is truly inspired.

Whether you play the game yourself, or you watch a play through video or two like I did, it is a scary yet extremely fun experience I highly recommend checking out.

A huge shoutout to WDR Studios for the development of this game. I look forward to unearthing more WDR Studios treasures in the near future. And of course, a huge shoutout to The Game Theorists as well for inspiring me to get my thoughts on this incredible game down on paper.