New game playthrough: "Theropods"!

New game!

I don't remember being overly obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. But I was fourteen years old when Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park was turned into a movie by my then favorite director Steven Spielberg. So yeah, that's when I started throwing around their names like the next generation did with Pokémon. I don't quite recall another adventure game previously featuring dinosaurs (except when Rex takes a bite out of crime in The Dagger of Amon Ra, but he's a museum exhibit so that doesn't count). I'm quite excited, therefore, to finally be able to play Theropods, a pixel art, point 'n click game about a young primal woman hunting dinosaurs to avenge her mother, who was killed by one of the terrible beasts. Or at least, that's what I assumed the story would be about after seeing the horrific intro...

A peaceful family excursion... For now...

The game has been ten years in the making by Lost Token, and has finally been published by Dionous Games. The first thing to adjust to, is the lack of dialogue and other texts. That's partly why I never really got into the Amanita games. I love my dialogues too much, talking to other characters, getting clues and learning the story and backgrounds that way. In Theropods, it all comes down to gestures and inflections in their (made-up) language. It means listening carefully to how the main character grunts when you click on something, which can either mean "Nope" or "Perhaps..." The latter means you might need another item first, or that it's perhaps not the right time to do it yet.

A peaceful little settlement... For now...

There are suprisingly few hotspots, even though there's lots of activity and details in the locations. I found the hotspots were pretty hard to find, without labels and only a colour change in the cursor. And even then I wasn't always sure what I was looking at, or even what I had just picked up. And it's difficult using an inventory item when you don't even know what it is exactly. There's not much to the gameplay, which mostly entails figuring out the right order of where to click, with rarely more than one screen to play around in. I'm sorry to say I often resorted to using everything on everything, after employing the hotspot highlighter - which I normally never do! - just to make sure I hadn't missed anything during my thorough pixel hunt of that location. 

Caught him!

But other than that, Theropods is a fun game. The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and it's exactly their allure that made me want to play this game. I certainly wasn't disappointed in that regard. Even more astounding is the soundtrack. There's no other word to use than epic. It sounds full orchestral and when it comes to the genre or type of music it goes from The Lion King to indeed Jurassic Park, reminding me of composers like John Williams, James Horner and Alan Silvestri. The music seems to quicken and get more bombastic as you go from one isolated crisis to another. This leads to a very fast-paced story, from dinosaur hunting to a barbarian raid, from escaping T-Rex attacks to avoiding a spinosaurus underwater.

Could be Mara Whitefish's ancestor...

The game consists of six short chapters, and I played through them all in a total of two and a half hours. There are many cutscenes knitting the playable parts together. For some reason (I guess resolution related) these clips are smaller than the regular full screen, like an in-game movie screen with a stone border. You can skip these scenes, but really, why would you? They are equally gorgeous to look at. Unless you want to replay to go achievement hunting; there's supposed to be a dog hidden somewhere in the game, but I didn't find it... 

Here, fishy fishy fishy...

There's also a sci-fi element to Theropods. It's no spoiler, because it's in the game's description: an alien spacecraft crashes down on earth and its occupant gets tangled up in the entire dinosaur/barbarian situation. No, it's not Adam Driver, but it is a fun second playable character, effectively teaming up with the cave woman. There are scenes where you only play as one or the other, but there are also situations where you have to manually switch between the two to get things done. Each one has their own inventory as well but the essence of the gameplay remains the same: figure out in which order you have to let them do something so the scene progresses.

Add dramatic rain animation...

Theropods is a much shorter game than I had hoped for (especially after playing Roots in the Sky for fourteen and a half hours; those playthrough posts are coming soon!) but that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. Granted, the lack of text as some basic guidance can be frustrating if you're not used to games like that, but in the end none of the obstacles is ever that hard to overcome. Developer Lost Token has put together a fun and exciting story, a perfect alternative to watching an action-adventure movie if you have a couple of hours to spare. While pixel art, it harks back to cinematic experiences like The Land Before Time, of course because of that dinosaur theme but also in style and general atmosphere. It looks very cute from afar, but there definitely are some darker (think Negan in The Walking Dead) moments.

You can find Theropods on Steam, GOG and itch.io!