DaRmaZat Theropods is a cute, side-scrolling, point-and-click puzzle adventure where dialogue and text are nonexistent. In our early preview, its pixel art, visceral tone, and pure puzzle-first design caught our attention. However, it also left us wondering if its restrictive controls and design quirks would be addressed before launch. We recently got to sink our teeth into the final build, and here is what we found.
Set in a prehistoric world ruled by brutal dinosaurs, Theropods starts on a gruesome note: your mother is eaten alive by a T-rex right in front of you. From that gore-filled opening, the story skips ahead to your adulthood in a primitive village where you play as a young huntress.
While the preview demo only offered a brief look at daily life in the settlement, the full game initially sets you off on a rescue mission after a rival clan raids your home, slaughters your people, and takes the survivors hostage. From there, you have to sneak through enemy territory, set traps, and solve environmental puzzles to free your tribe. As you progress, the narrative expands far beyond a simple rescue, taking an unexpected sci-fi twist with the arrival of aliens and gradually weaving primitive cavemen and extraterrestrial elements into a surprisingly cohesive mix.
To tell this story, the developers added fully fledged cinematic cutscenes between major chapters. These scenes use frame-by-frame pixel art to bridge story beats without words, with the characters communicating through simple gestures, body language, and the occasional grunt or gibberish word. Backed by a melodic soundtrack – where I found the electric guitar tunes to be a phenomenal standout – this quiet storytelling actually carries the narrative really well.
Theropods plays out across self-contained, screen-based puzzle sandboxes. Some areas shift the action above or below the traditional 2D plane to reveal hidden items or an exit. To move forward, you have to interact with NPCs, combine items, and trigger environmental events – often in a strict sequence. Every screen acts as a hard gate: skipping ahead or parking a tricky puzzle for later isn’t an option, forcing a slow, trial-and-error process. Fortunately, unlike the demo, this final build lets you save manually.
Unfortunately, controls haven’t evolved past the demo phase, leaving input stuck strictly on the mouse – a missed opportunity for anyone playing on handhelds like the Steam Deck, where controller support would be a natural fit. Worse, interacting with the environment remains clunky. You often have to resort to pixel-hunting, dragging your cursor across every screen element to spot an orange crosshair. On top of that, click detection is finicky, requiring pixel-perfect positioning before an action actually registers. Without a hint system to nudge you past the more obtuse logic, these control issues turn solid puzzle design into a frustrating chore.
Final Thoughts
Theropods‘ wordless storytelling and prehistoric setting give it a very distinct feel. Compared with the preview build, the title has improved through noticeable visual updates and new story cutscenes, while also offering a much deeper and more diverse narrative than I expected. However, the game still fails to fix its fundamental gameplay problems. By leaving out controller support, keeping imprecise click hitboxes, and relying heavily on pixel-hunting, puzzling remains for those with the most time and patience. It is a neat indie puzzle game, but unfortunately not a perfect one because of these issues.
Additional Information
Release Date: August 20, 2026
Reviewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: Lost Token
Publisher: Dionous Games
Website: https://www.dionous.com/theropods
Relevant Links: Theropods on STEAM
