''Lizard''
(itch, steam) is a homebrew indie platform game by Brad Smith, designed for the Nintendo Entertainment System but also available for PC, Mac, and Linux.
The game has you play as a kid who can hop inside the mouths of giant lizards and use them as suits to gain different powers. Each power gained depends on the colour of the lizard the kid hops into. The lizards' abilities can be used to help navigate the big wide world the game is set in.
So, why are you a kid who controls lizards from inside them? What is the story of the game? Who do you have to fight, and who/what do you have to save? Well, no one and nothing. Yeah, there's no real overarching story line to tell you where to go or what to do. You're free to go wherever you want, explore the world at your leisure.
It's a big world to explore, particularly for an NES game. There are vague clues to the story of the world you're in, in the shapes of monoliths with writing on them, as well as phrases of dialogue offered by some of the game's characters. Just like the player is thrown into a world without direction of where to go to, the game world also seems mostly disinterested in the player. The various creatures in the world all seem to be minding their business living their lives and react only when they feel approached or threatened, much like wild animals.
Unusually for exploration platformers, it is (almost) impossible to attack the creatures of this world, unless you find the well-hidden lizard of death. They can only be dodged and avoided. For the most part, they can harm you but you can't harm them. This gives the game a unique spin where you have to explore without touching anything that moves. Even the boss fights mostly rely on platforming avoidance than directly attacking the boss characters.
The game was funded on Kickstarter on November 27th, 2014. It was ultimately released on March 4th, 2018.
Lizard contains examples of:
- Auto-Scrolling Level: With the lizard of surf you can enjoy a trek down a treacherous river.
- Amphibian Assault: One enemy type you face in the game are little frogs.
- Arc Words: Both in-game and in promotional materials, the phrase "My lizard is the lizard of X" keeps showing up, where X can be any random thing. Pausing the game, this serves the purpose of telling you which lizard you're wearing, with a phrase such as "my lizard is the lizard of knowledge" or "my lizard is the lizard of bounce".
- Checkpoint: Blue save stones serve this purpose. A face shows up on them when they've been activated.
- Death Throws: If you die, you turn into a skeleton and then jump off the screen.
- Dual-World Gameplay: The game is split into a recto and verso side, like two sides of a page. Recto is mostly a day world and verso is mostly a night world. There are doors between the two sides that are accurately placed to go back and forth between the two sides of the page. The two worlds are also mirrored: going right on recto corresponds to going left in verso, although this is only obvious by the way the doors connect between the two worlds.
- Enemy Roll Call: One of the endings has this! It's the only way to know what the game characters are called. They also have some names in the source code, but the source code names are less inventive and have fewer jokes and references to other works.
- Feathered Fiend: Birds are enemies in the game, including dive-bombing owls.
- Hail Fire Peaks: There is a mountain and there are a couple of doors connecting its recto and verso sides. Recto is a snow-covered peak and verso is a firey volcano.
- Hub Level: Unusually for an NES platformer, the entire game is a hub level, and the sections are very inter-connected. From any one section, you are never too far from any other in the game, if you can figure out the right route.
- Lethal Lava Land: Underneath and around the volcano, there is a steam-powered machine running on the heat of the surrounding lava.
- Level in the Clouds: Because we have Solid Clouds, you can explore a good deal of the sky if you just find the right spot to stand on.
- Lovable Lizard: Particularly cute when you find an inactive lizard just sleeping on a raised platform, but also very cute when you're wearing a lizard, which seemingly is still alive as it blinks with you inside it!
- Metafiction: The monoliths in the recto side spell out a parody of an NES manual congratulating on your purchase of the Lizard NES game and how to use it.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The game has no story to drive it forward. You're basically free to explore the world however you like.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Player Character becomes a skeleton after a single hit.
- One-Word Title: Lizard, naturally.
- Password Save: The game uses this to keep track of where you were, and what lizard you were wearing when you last saved the game.
- Punny Name: There's many. Most of the names aren't revealed until the Enemy Roll Call, and most of the puns are pretty obscure to figure out. Here are some examples:
- The octopus is called Shaft because she's a bad mother.
- The duck is called Graveyard because of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.
- The cat is called Bowie, spelled in Japanese kana because he's a cat from Japan just like in the song Ziggy Stardust.
- The big frog is called Nujan and frog in Spanish is rana, making his name Rana Nujan similar to the Indian mathematician Ramanujan, who was known for his work on continued fractions making the whole thing a very oblique reference to Frog Fractions.
- The octopus is called Shaft because she's a bad mother
- Side View: How the game's viewed.
- Solid Clouds: You can stand on clouds in this game.
- That Was the Last Entry: The monolith entries in the recto side tell a story of someone who came before you and tried on the lizards, but it cuts off abruptly.
- Tree Trunk Tour: A section of the world occurs inside and around the roots of a massive wooded area.
- Under the Sea: A watery land full of jellyfish, anemone, and aggressive fish, where jumping is slightly inhibited.
