Review: Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 will have you asking for dinomore of the dinolore

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 a match-3 game at its core, but it has a lot of narrative design and story surrounding it to make it feel so much more elevated than a simple match-3 game. Also, I’d like to say early on that despite the game title saying “3”, this game is the first in the line.

You play as JJ, a cop protagonist who has been put on a case that was once covered by the infamous Jack Briar, who dealt with this case 20 years prior. What comes to light early on is that Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is a game, but not just any game, it’s one that was scrapped and never released.

In the first two iterations, Jack Briar was a beloved main character. However, his story ended when he was killed, and JJ was born to slide into that role. Unfortunately, JJ’s game was never finished, and the version of the game that exists has all the data attached from all the brainstorming and changes that were made throughout the development process.

Honestly, it’s all even more meta than it seems because the developers, Strange Scaffold, went through a similar experience with this very game. There were times when Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 seemed doomed to never see the light of day. That experience, which I think many devs can commiserate with, was used as inspiration for finishing up the game and getting it out to the masses. 

So, you’re playing a real game that almost didn’t exist about a fictional game that never got the chance to exist. As such, all the previous iterations of characters, designs, and enemies are available as glitches that can be explored. In the very literal sense of the word, this game has branching paths, and these paths explore the “might have beens” of the designing phase. 

Personally, I found the game to be a joy and very enlightening about what the process looks like when you’re trying to figure out the blueprint of a game. 

Watch the trailer for Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3!

As for gameplay, you have some dialogue decisions that affect the branch you’re on. Each branch has multiple endings, so you’ll want to revisit branches to experience everything. Depending on your answers, you may be rewarded with items or, more importantly, titles. 

Through certain choices, you can unlock things like “coward”, “feral”, “awakened”, and so many, many more. These are important because some answers require a specific title to use. Once you have it unlocked, you’ll be able to access more endings for that path and get more lore.

Sometimes, the titles will open up options in the battle phase and present as unique actions. Your enemies are defeated through a match-3 game and every enemy has their own parameters for you to conquer them through. Some baddies will require you to match knives for straight damage, others may need you to match books or gems that go toward a progress bar.

In one game, matching red gems is good, but in another, red gems could hurt you. This is what I feel keeps the game from going stagnant. With each enemy requiring a different playstyle to win, it keeps you on your toes.

You don’t have to rely on your brainpower alone, though. You can buy items at the bar set up like save points at each branching direction. There, you can buy big and small items as well as upgrade your health and stamina bar, and increase your bag space.

Items range from recovering health to doing full-on damage or manipulating the board. I can, honestly, say that some enemies are a bitch to win against, but if you have the right items, you can win every single battle.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is built to make you want to figure it all out. It doesn’t really have replayability in the sense that you’d want to start over from scratch. But, the way it’s designed, you’ll be revisiting paths you’ve already seen multiple times because you’ve unlocked a title or acquired an item that you needed to further progress there.

JJ, Tamer of Dinosaurs, Breaker of Games, Collector of Titles, Destroyer of Clones… and so on and so forth

I had a really good time uncovering solutions, gaining titles, and meeting the various iterations of characters. If you enjoy match-3 games, this seems like a must for your gaming shelf. And, unless you absolutely loathe the genre, I still think most people will have a good time with this game.

Unfortunately, I did run into some minor issues and one major one. There were two instances where I thought there might be something wrong with the game due to lag. In one area, the dialogue lagged just a little bit and made me think the game had slowed down. But, in the area where you visit “The Wooden Society,” the game freezes for a good 3-5 seconds and scares you into thinking it froze completely. 

These aren’t major issues, but they were repeatable, so there’s something there that’s stalling dialogue. The last one is that the game will randomly force quit. This didn’t start happening until the last 50% of the game. Luckily, this game autosaves often due to the nature of constantly going down different branches, so I never lost progress.

Sadly, I can’t say why it does it. Unlike the previous issues, the game quit in different areas. I had it happen 5 times and I can’t determine what triggered it.

All in all, despite the issues it had, I would still highly recommend grabbing Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. I had so much fun and I think others will too. If you want to grab the game, you can get it on Steam for $19.99. I got about 11.5 hours of gameplay out of it, so I think that’s a fair price.
If this isn’t your cup of tea, you can check out one of our other reviews, Flibbius McDoogle and the Flying Machine. It’s a silly little point-and-click adventure about a turtle who wants to fly.