Technical Information
Developer: Stegalosaurus Game Development
Publisher: Stegalosaurus Game Development
Release Date: August 28, 2019
Embark on a universe where dinosaurs, centaurs, and mythological creatures share the same planet. Take on the role of Quince, a dinosaur playwright (literally!), and join forces with director Kit Marlowe in a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Think the story can’t get any crazier? Well, consider that you and other characters live in Denmark and two very influential families are on the brink of going to war.
Furry Shakespeare: Dashing Dinosaurs & Sexy Centaurs is a short visual novel mixed with a dating sim that will surely entertain those who enjoy unconventional plots.
Final Thoughts – Analyzing the Game as a Whole
Graphics
The characters are well-drawn, but unfortunately, they don’t have many poses or expressions.
There are no kissing scenes during the dates and, since it’s also a dating sim, this can be quite frustrating. 🙁
The scenery has a different art style from the characters, resembling a 3D scene with a 2D filter. I personally found it unappealing.
The menu and HUD are clean, except for two things that bothered me: you can’t hide the text area to better view the characters and scenery, and there’s no dialogue history.
Visual novels are games with a lot of text, and this type of interactivity makes them more user-friendly.
Soundtrack and Sound Effects
The game’s music was very well done! It was something that surprised me!
I found it a pity that the characters didn’t get voices, but considering this is an indie game (and consequently had a low budget), that’s totally understandable.
One flaw in this area is that some scenes were missing music, and after choosing my dialogue option, the confirmation sound was very low (possibly a bug).
Gameplay
Right from the start, I couldn’t help but be drawn to this game. The story may not have anything particularly interesting, but the characters are! Unfortunately, unlike what the game’s title suggests, there aren’t any sexy centaurs. In fact, none of the characters have strong visual appeal. But at least there are centaurs wearing jeans! hahahaha
There is a tutorial explaining how dialogue choices work. Essentially, each dialogue option has a color that can indicate flirting, seriousness, aggression, or neutrality. You can disable the color of your dialogue choices to make them less predictable for the player.
The problem is that every new day, the game asks if you want to read the tutorial explanation again. I didn’t see any sense in this. If the idea was to leave this explanation always available, there should have been a “How to Play” option in the main menu.
The game doesn’t have auto-save, but you can save at any time, and there are multiple slots available. There is also no scene gallery.
The dialogue is well-written, but I couldn’t figure out where my choices were decisive in changing the ending.
When starting the game, you can choose to be male or female, but almost all characters are possible dates (i.e., you’re bisexual).
The game is quite short (I finished it in approximately two and a half hours), and I think it’s only worth experiencing for those who really enjoy visual novels.
I encountered some minor bugs (overlapping characters, minor grammatical errors), but what bothered me most was that the achievements didn’t work. And for some reason (a Steam bug, I believe), on one occasion when I opened the game, my playtime wasn’t recorded.
Replayability and Game Retention
The characters don’t have many poses, and as a result, there aren’t many different scenes. Making other choices will only change the text, keeping the game’s appeal quite low.
Unless you really enjoyed the story a lot (and are very curious to test other dialogue combinations) and want to unlock all the achievements, I don’t see many reasons to play through it again.
