Terrible Lizards characters

The player character

A college student driving home to see family when his car gives out on Route 66. He is not a soldier, not a scientist, and not brave in the way horror games usually demand.

Most of Jordan's characterisation comes from the phone calls and his own running commentary. He complains, he overshares, and he keeps talking to Stella because the alternative is silence. The game uses his ordinary-ness on purpose: every climb and slide is something an untrained person would attempt out of panic.

The voice on the other end

A paleontologist and friend of the Coolidge family who talks Jordan through the attraction over a headset. She is the player's only ally and the reason half the codes get solved.

Stella is not a tutorial voice with a name attached. She knew Dalton before the attraction swallowed him, and her instructions carry the guilt of someone who did not intervene sooner. She hands over several keypad codes directly, which makes her the closest thing the game has to a difficulty dial.

Founder of Dalton's Dinos

A paleontologist who turned a dig site into a roadside attraction, then turned the attraction into a brand. His video tapes are the spine of the story.

Dalton is the archetype the game is really about: a scientist who is also a showman, and who genuinely believes the second job serves the first. The tapes move from infectious enthusiasm to something much smaller and more frightened. He is not a villain, which is what makes the ending land.

Co-founder, Dalton's wife

A paleontologist in her own right, and the person who sees the attraction for what it is costing her family.

Elena's audio logs are the coldest documents in the game. She is not frightened of the dinosaurs, she is exhausted by her husband, and the game trusts you to notice that the two problems are the same problem wearing different clothes.

The missing child

Dalton's son, sent to the attraction so his father could spend time with him. He talks constantly about an imaginary friend called Raptor Boy.

Junior is the reason the phone in the lobby is ringing. His “imaginary friend” is the plot's central joke and its central horror: an adult who dismisses a child's friend is exactly the adult who lets the monster in.

Project Pilgrim scientist

A researcher from the 1950s military project that found the substance under the site first, decades before Dalton did.

Fellows appears in found footage, and he is the one who explains what the tar actually is. Casting a well-known theorist as the man delivering the lore dump is the game winking at its own fanbase.

Attraction staff

One of the Dalton's Dinos employees whose notes and recordings fill in the ordinary working life of the attraction.

The supporting cast exists mostly through audio logs and notes. Darrel is the clearest example of a staff member who knew something was wrong and had no authority to do anything about it.