I dabble in the esoteric games around these parts, but when our fearless leader DMed me to say “We got the code for Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored for ya,” I thought I was being trolled. I like ‘em weird, but that’s going a little too far… but then I checked, and it is, indeed, a match-3 survival horror comedy RPG Search Action about returning to a creepy redneck mansion full of dinosaurs, so that is something that exists.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored
Developer: Pedalboard Games
Price: $9.99
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
Have you ever thought of a match-3 game like Bejeweled or Candy Crush, but something a little more two-fisted, in the vein of a Kurt Russell action movie from the 80s? Well, deep in the Louisiana bayou, a moonshine mogul has been receiving an awful lot of industrial brewing supplies. An ATF agent goes in to investigate: Jack Briar, square-jawed, 5 o’clock shadow, ready to throw down.
But when he gets into the creepy mansion, it’s not full of mooks or moonshiners…it’s full of dinosaurs. Note that a mansion full of dinosaurs in the Louisiana swamps isn’t all that far-fetched. At one point, there was a plan to stock the bayous with hippos, later fictionalized in Sarah Gailey’s excellent series River of Teeth. As a Louisiana native, I buy it. I wouldn’t even be that surprised.
Anyhow, exploring the mansion and uncovering the mysterious and evil dinosaur experiments also reveals to poor Jack that he is in…some kind of unfinished video game with invisible walls and a meta-story even he struggles to understand (he’s more the punching kind of federal agent than the thinking kind of federal agent, if you get my drift). Explore the mansion, uncover the terrible secrets of the terrible developers that trapped you in this hell, and punch some troublingly sexy dinosaurs…is this all in the remit of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? Who even knows, man?
Most of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored is, of course, match-3 faceoffs with dinosaurs, cannibals that may be clones of guys you already know, sexy dinosaurs, a triceratops with an agenda, and an evil computer…let’s just say life isn’t easy in the creepy dinosaur mansion. Most of the really cool stuff is done with Actions, which require stockpiling certain icons earned by matching them on the board. This may do things like clear a bunch of symbols from the board, inflict damage, shield you from damage, restore health, and other things that make your standard match-3 gameplay a little more interesting.
Essentially, this one comes down to two things: How much do you want to engage with the cleverness of the over-the-top story and the meta-story about being trapped in an incomplete video game? And how much do you enjoy the match-3 faceoffs? Because there’s some exploring, some poking around, there are some items that help, but you’re going to be doing a lot of matching of shapes to progress. Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored is one of those games that feels like it’s overkill to play on The Big Computer, but I bet it would be amazing to play tucked into bed or on a flight on a Steam Deck.
The Final Word
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored features a fun story and match-3 gameplay, but that’s all there is to it.
MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
