The Best Dinosaur (TomSmizzle)


This game’s pretty hard, but being the Best Dinosaur is pretty hard.[Author’s Description]

[Download for Windows]

4 Comments.

  1. this is funny and cool looking and plays well

  2. I thought I was going to chime in to say that I really like this even though I’d never be the best dinosaur, but then I tried a third time and now I’m the best dinosaur!

    I do like this structure, at least for a game this short. Every player sees all the levels. It takes two plays to realize that the order is (mostly?) consistent (I could swear there was a level involving a long leftward jump over lava toward the end that didn’t appear on my final run). It removes the ability to replay immediately to learn right away from your mistakes, but in this case that was sort of interesting, maybe precisely because the most likely ways of failing here have less to do with virtuosic platforming and more to do with not yet incorporating knowledge about a game system (how to jump around the spikes in the vertical shaft on the third level, the timing it takes to drop down a shaft behind meteor, how the targeted meteors work.) If it were a twitchier game, this might be frustrating — no chance to improve muscle memory — but here it worked well.

    Lastly, I was going to say that I sure wish I could have seen the scientist give me his seal of approval at the end, but now that I think of it I’m not sure he and his kin had a chance to exist.

    (Also, I accidentally skipped both the credits and the second ending screen, right before the credits. Might be worth changing it to a specific key to skip. At minimum, maybe remove the arrow keys from those that trigger the jump forward?)

    • Oh wow, I’m really glad you liked the structure! I was worried that it was a little too punitive, but I think you’re right that the short length and identical level order does something to nullify that.
      You’re right about the ending screens, and you are ESPECIALLY right about the scientist thing.

      [SPOILERS]
      my original plan, which I didn’t have time for, was to have the bad ending be a classful of students judging your dinosaur and the good ending be a dinosaur standing at the blackboard instead of the scientist, but I was running low on time and creative energy when it got to the point where I had to do that. The second ending screen told you that you can press T in-game to enter confetti mode. Celebrate your skills as a dinosaur in style!

      Seriously I’m really glad you enjoyed the game! 😀