Terrible Lizards drops weapons and makes parkour your only defence
The first-person dinosaur horror game is on Game Pass, and its developer says aerial control gives it a low skill floor but a high ceiling for speed routes.
Terrible Lizards, a first-person horror parkour game about escaping runaway animatronic dinosaurs in an abandoned Route 66 attraction, is out now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass and Steam. In an October 30, 2026 Xbox Wire post, its developer explained the central design call: you get no weapons at all, so movement is the only way to survive.
Built for rhythm, not shooting
The team wanted the reactive flow of classic 2D platformers like Donkey Kong Country and early Mario, where you trust the controls and keep moving. Mirror's Edge and Dying Light are the obvious first-person comparisons, but the post says the moment-to-moment feel draws more on Titanfall, Call of Duty and Overwatch, with Neon White named as closer to the target balance.
The key system is aerial control. After a jump you can still adjust your trajectory, pulling back if you overshoot or nudging left and right before landing. For players new to first-person platforming, that buys time to correct mistakes. For confident players, it opens harder jumps, faster routes and the occasional skip past an entire platforming section. The developer calls it a low skill floor with a high skill ceiling, which is exactly the shape speedrunners look for.
Your moveset includes jumps, slides, wall runs, clambers, ledge grabs and swings, and the goal is to chain them without thinking about individual inputs.
How the monsters test you
Encounters come in several forms: direct chases, collapsing environments you must outrun, and open arenas where a creature roams while you complete objectives or find an exit. Between those set pieces sit slower stretches of platforming, environmental puzzles, exploration and large caverns. The developer says it did not want six hours of nonstop sprinting, which also gives a rough sense of the campaign's length. Collectibles, hunt arenas and New Game Plus round it out.
Where to play
Terrible Lizards comes from WDR Studios and is published by Digital Pajamas and Behaviour Interactive. On Steam it launched on October 29 at $24.99, with a launch discount, and includes Simplified Chinese and Japanese among nine languages. Game Pass subscribers on Xbox can play it at no extra cost.
Source: Xbox Wire; Steam.
