Terrible Lizards, a first-person horror and platforming game, is available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Game Pass, according to a post dated Oct. 30, 2026, on Xbox Wire. The post was written by Game Director John Gelardi.
The game is set in 1992 at Dalton’s Dinos, an abandoned Route 66 roadside attraction in New Mexico. According to the game’s description, the staff have disappeared, and a voice on a telephone asks the player to help find a missing child. The player’s car has broken down miles from anywhere, and the attraction is home to monstrous creatures that hunt the player. Gelardi’s post describes them as runaway dinosaur animatronics, meaning mechanical dinosaurs.
Players cannot fight back. Gelardi said the team made a deliberate decision not to give players weapons or other ways to resist, so movement is the main way to handle danger. The game description lists running, jumping, climbing, wall running, bouncing and sliding as the tools for survival.
Gelardi said the first-person view was chosen to bring a fast, reactive rhythm to a 3D platformer. He named older 2D platformers such as Donkey Kong Country and the early Mario games as inspiration for that feel. He called Mirror’s Edge and Dying Light the obvious first-person platforming reference points, but said the team wanted Terrible Lizards to feel a little different. The team was chasing the tighter, more immediate feel of games such as Titanfall, Call of Duty and Overwatch, he said, and Neon White was closer to the balance the team wanted.
The game includes an aerial control system that lets players adjust their path after a jump. Gelardi said this gives less confident players room to correct a jump that goes too far or drifts to the side. He said skilled players can use the same freedom to make harder jumps, find faster routes and sometimes skip parts of a platforming section. He described the result as “a low skill floor, but a high skill ceiling.”
Gelardi said the creature encounters take several forms. Some are direct chases. In others, a creature causes the surroundings to collapse, or the player is dropped into an open arena with a loose monster and must finish objectives or find a way out.
Between those moments, he said, the game offers traditional platforming, exploration, environmental puzzles and larger caverns. He said the team did not want constant sprinting or movement that mattered only in set platforming sections. The story, collectibles, hunt arenas and New Game Plus content are built around the movement, he said.
Players can collect tapes, notes and recordings to learn more about the history of Dalton’s Dinos, according to the game description. The store listing names Digital Pajamas and shows prices of $24.99 and $19.99. The post did not explain the difference between the two. It also lists PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass.