Set in a prehistoric world, Theropods sees you in the role of a young huntress who must use their wits and skills to survive when a rival tribe invades. The idea of outrunning dinosaurs and surviving on land is turned on its head when a traveller from the stars crash-lands, and they must work together to achieve both of their goals.
Theropods is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Lost Token. Hand-drawn frame by frame, it portrays its prehistoric world wordlessly with charming pixel art graphics and exaggerated animations. With about ten years in development, Theropods has been a long-awaited title for point-and-click purists.
Moving Around The World
Control is mostly via the mouse, as is normal for the genre, with a dynamic interaction system. There are no verb commands to over-complicate puzzles; if you can interact with an object, your character will automatically do what is necessary. Same with inventory; if you can combine objects, it is as simple as clicking one object on another. Sometimes, however, things did need more than one interaction, and without the verb interface of “look” or “use,”, I sometimes got stumped at some locations until I realised they needed additional interactions.
Rubber Chicken With A Pulley In The Middle
Being an adventure game, there is some moon logic involved in some of the puzzles. Still, fortunately, puzzles were isolated to a few screens, so brute forcing and experimenting wasn’t an endless exercise of using multiple items on multiple items to find the solution. In relation to this, there were also keyboard shortcuts to open the inventory and, more usefully, a hotkey to highlight anything intractable on screen.
Don’t get me wrong, Theropods does use a lot of visual logic and environmental cues. I rarely got stuck; it just stood out more when I got bamboozled by a puzzle with so few variables.
Throughout the adventure, you also switch between our two protagonists, which gives us a mix of sci-fi and primitive solutions.
A Beautiful Pixel World
Theropods uses a simple but equally endearing art style. Fully pixel-drawn, every character is unique, and the main protagonist’s appearance evolves over the course of the adventure. Almost every chapter is book-ended by animated vignettes, which are again done with its unique pixel art.
Taking inspiration from games like Planet of Lana, Gobliiins, and Machinarium, Theropods features no dialogue of any kind. All communication is done via expressions and gestures with simple grunts and sounds. This also gives it greater accessibility, as with no text or subtitles to read, everything is conveyed entirely through visual pantomime and expressions, which is a rare choice for a story-focused puzzle game. The music is a mix of primal tribal rhythms with eerie, atmospheric sci-fi synthesisers.
Final Thoughts
Coming in at around two and a half hours, Theropods wasn’t a long game, but it was a great experience. Its world was lively and colourful; its puzzles felt just challenging enough. Despite using no dialogue, it managed to tell a charming tale full of adventure, grief and character growth. Theropods won’t be for everyone, but those who do take a chance may find a wonderful experience.
Developer: Lost Token
Publisher: Dionous Games, Gamersky Games
Platforms: PC
Release date: 20 August 2026
Key provided by PressEngine
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