There are a few childhood facts that remain true, even as we now live in a time where the accuracy of facts slips away by the day. Two of these truths are as follows: dinosaurs are cool, and so are people from space. Despite the two aesthetics being classically awesome, it’s risky putting them into the same story since they are so dramatically opposite. It may end up being too much cool in one place.
Theropods knits the two wildly different styles together in a single, cohesive story about teamwork and solidarity. The trailers make no secret of it—you’ll play as both a prehistoric woman, clad in a two-piece Tarzan-like animal skin, and a woman in beetle-like armor who crash-lands into this world ruled by dinosaurs. Initially, they share no common ground other than a desire to survive the hostile land.
This dynamic is the game’s strength. Without a word of comprehensible dialogue between them, they use gestures and postures to communicate. Over the course of the game, the two bond in a way that feels more than the expected trauma bonding from an adventure story. There’s something empowering steeped into the short cutscenes that feature them together, and it stems from their resolve to support each other.
Part of this is possible because of the wordless nature of the storytelling. There are many exchanges in which their facial expressions communicate understanding, either with a softened look or the hardening of their determination to continue. The player relies much more heavily on these moments to make sense of the images on screen, and despite the game’s rather old-school, chunky pixel art, there’s plenty of depth to plumb. However, outside of these interactions, the story will be exactly what it looks like on paper: a revenge story that hits all the beats you’d expect.
At first glance I wasn’t entirely sold on the art style. The animations are a bit unrefined, and the style can appear flat since most assets don’t have strong shading. However, it really is the cutscenes that contribute to the atmosphere the most, with smart visual parallelisms that unite the two characters in their journey. There’s the right level of cinematic framing and pacing to make the art style say more than it actually does. The color palette reminds me of this Melissa and Doug children’s puzzle, with the dominant oranges and greens piecing together the pixels to make the larger picture stand out.
As much as Theropods reminds me of how much I liked dinosaurs as a kid, I’m also reminded of how terrible I was at point-and-click adventures. I remember watching my older sister breeze through King’s Quest VII. When I could elbow my way on to the computer, I struggled to find the logic in how to snap items together or where I could use them. I was constantly drawn to it despite never solving a single puzzle on my own.
I still feel the draw to play point-and-click games, and while I’ve managed to beat some on my own since playing on an MS-DOS, I feel too dumb most of the time to make things work. In Theropods, the logic baked into each scenario is workable, even for an unintelligent guy like me.
There certainly were moments I was scratching my head, unsure if I had attempted every combination of item and location to implement it. While I had my moments of struggling, leaning back in my computer chair with hands pressed together and fingers on my lips, I was never left without a goal.
For example, about halfway into Theropods, there is a situation where one of the two protagonists is pinned down by a giant pterodactyl. She’s unable to do much, except scare a lizard, causing it to move from one location to another. I had learned that the slime of this lizard had some toxic properties, having accidentally knocked myself out at one point. So the objective became clear: get this toxic slime onto the pterodactyl. Somehow, I cobbled together a dart gun with a hollow bone and some seeds. But the lizard didn’t ever really stay put. After an embarrassing amount of trial and error, I found a way to turn the lizard into an item for my inventory where I could combine the slime with the darts.
In this experience, I relearned two valuable lessons. One: I am not that smart, and two: the puzzle-solving value of items is uneven. There’s not a single red herring item in the game. You’ll use everything eventually. However, there are definitely items that you may use only once or twice and don’t get discarded. I found myself working under the assumption that if an item remained in my inventory, it always had a purpose. In the majority of scenarios, this is largely true. But there were a few moments where I realized that I was trying to juggle too many tools when working with whatever was unique to the situation mattered more than anything else.
I never ended up feeling too frustrated, though, and Theropods clocking in around 4 hours was a fantastic length for me. It’s segmented into six chapters that don’t hold the player back for too long. The cadence is easy to get into, and I surprised myself by beating the game in just two play sessions.
Theropods embody many, many cool things, but almost to the point of truisms. The two leads are wonderful to get to know and the puzzles satisfy, but ultimately I’m left without understanding if there’s anything bigger Theropods would have me think about its narrative and gameplay.
