REVIEW: Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 - A matchroidvania RPG about a fake game series represents the rage of an entire industry

Nate Hermanson
Apr 22
7 min read

If you've ever poked at the strange corners of a game's world that felt meant for more, wondered where a character who was so prominent in marketing disappeared to when you finally got your hands on the game, or wondered what special concepts were lost with the likes of Starcraft: Ghost, Star Wars: 1313, or Silent Hills, then Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is one to pick up.

This match-3 RPG is Strange Scaffold's rage against the dying of the light during what is undoubtedly one of the darkest times in the game industry's history. It's a weird match-3 RPG that leans on some inside baseball story beats to tell an incredibly clever and affecting video game story with some of the most interesting utilizations of match-3 gameplay mechanics to boot.

And in the end, CRDM3 should be required reading for gamers who spend their time arguing online about low-res trees in trailers before they ever pick up a controller again.

An in-game screenshot of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. A man with short brown hair who wears a green t-shirt and a black bulletproof vest stands with his hands at his sides and he speaks nervously to a tiny raptor with a pistol. Their conversation goes: "Freeze!" "You freeze! I've got a gun!" "OH MY GOD YOU TALK."

Just the Facts

Developer: Strange Scaffold

Publisher: Strange Scaffold, Frosty Pop

Platform(s): PC

Price: $19.99

Release Date: April 22, 2025

Review key provided by developer via FIFTYcc.

Video games are good. The industry though? Verdict's still out.

Strange Scaffold continues their tour of fascinating projects with CRDM3, a game the studio had in the works for quite some time before finally getting the green light thanks to their collaboration with Frosty Pop. It has taken some time to get to us, but with the state of the industry as it is today, it couldn't have come at a better time.

First thing's first: No, there is no Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 or 2. Yes, it's a send-up of the Resident Evil franchise. And yes, this is going to be a weird one.

Protagonist J.J. Hardwell is a recent transfer into the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Super Science. On his first day on the job, he's sent off to a decrepit mansion in the south to investigate rumors of dinosaur-based super science happening under the watchful eye of known evil super scientist Huncan Dockright the Third. When the first thing he finds inside is, in fact, dinosaurs — and he is promptly killed by an undead T. rex the world believed to be gone after it killed famed A.T.S. agent Jack Briar — J.J. is just as shocked as the player to find himself waking in the mansion’s bar and chatting with the very same Huncan he was tracking down, the man now inexplicably tending bar.

It's then that J.J. finds out the hardest truth: he's in a video game. More than that, he's in a cancelled video game's demo, and it's degrading rapidly thanks to a few key bugs. With the help of villain turned jaded bartender Huncan, J.J.'s tasked with tracking down those bugs to keep the game he's living in alive.

Strange Scaffold pulls from their personal experiences, and from nightmare stories from developers across the industry, to deliver a painfully prescient and hilariously heartful love letter to the games we'll never know.

What ensues from there is a meta-exploration of game development and the myriad issues plaguing the industry. Whether it's unnecessarily detailed 4K feather textures causing performance issues, strange character design choices brought on by money guys making demands to chase industry trends, or entire gameplay systems left abandoned because of the dreaded "gameplay pivot," CRDM3 tackles it all. Strange Scaffold pulls from their personal experiences, and from nightmare stories from developers across the industry, to deliver a painfully prescient and hilariously heartful love letter to the games we'll never know.

Strange Scaffold has always found a way to eke out genuine stories from odd starting points, but CRDM3 might be their most candid work yet. As the game reached its end, I could feel the melancholic rage pulsating out of the screen and tears welled up as I thought about the many projects cancelled before their time. It's appropriately agonizing, it's spectacularly hilarious in its satirical takedown of the industry's worst bits, and it's so specifically an experience that only this industry and this team could produce. That does mean you require at least a passing curiosity about the industry and perhaps a dash of inside knowledge about how games are made to really appreciate it all, but if CRDM3 is the game that wakes you up to the issues of this industry and what it's like to be a creative right now, it's not a bad entry point.

And yes. This is all coming out of a match-3 game. Don't forget that.

An in-game screenshot of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. In the middle of the screen, a grid of various symbols waits for the player to make matches of three. On either side of the grid are two characters fighting. On the left is J.J. Hardwell, a man with short brown hair who wears a green t-shirt and a black bulletproof vest. He looks on nervously. On the right is Pclownadactyl, a pterodactyl with clown makeup on his face. They each have their own set of moves.

This ain't your mama's Bejeweled.

CRDM3 is primarily a match-3 RPG, a la Puzzle Quest. You match symbols on a grid, hoping to create cascading combos, before gathering them up to perform special moves to fight off your opponents. But CRDM3 goes a step further than its peers, as match-3 becomes not only your combat system, but your entire way of interacting with the world — picking a lock, defusing a bomb, hacking into the secret lab in the basement.

The constant recontextualization and slight shifting in your match-3 priorities make it a fresher-than-expected experience every time. Where collecting symbols in one case will eventually unlock some powerful attack move, like the "Hurl Pie" attack pictured above, another might make you collect a specific set of symbols to pull your focus away from distractingly cute pet photos on the internet.

Ultimately, if you aren't a match-3 megafan, no amount of silly recontextualizing will convert you — but if watching gems cascade into wild combos does it for you, CRDM3's brand of match-3 is deeply engaging. Their small twists in the form of unique stress and progress meters offer some interesting wrinkles. But even as a fan, I did brush up against the brink of match-3 fatigue by the end of my 8-hour playthrough.

As you tackle each new problem and make crucial judgments in the choice-based narrative, an intriguing RPG-like progression system reveals itself. J.J. will develop new traits as he wanders through the empty halls of his game that unlock new choices and new moves. Choose to run out of the room with the paintings whose eyes seem to follow you and you'll develop his Coward trait. Keep relying on his back flip move in combat and you'll unlock his Developing Calf Injury trait.

Such traits grant access to new choices, leading to fresh paths to chase down in the mansion and potent moves that can help you end encounters in one fell swoop. And there are tons of paths to explore in J.J.'s looping journey through CRDM3's digital realms. A big part of the game is about experiencing all you possibly can from this game's files: making every choice and exploring the new branches that emerge from them before eventually hitting a dead end and doing it all again. By freeing you from the feeling that choices are permanent and making it easy to jump between checkpoints all across J.J.'s journey, you're allowed to experiment and experience all the weird odds and ends.

One particular dead end led to me coming back at the very end of the game to experience the game's toughest fight with brand-new match-3 mechanics. Talk about satisfying.

In my experience, there were some minor bugs and crashes and a few strange interactions with some of the game's more complex abilities. But since they never really hurt my gameplay experience, in a way it was easy to wave them off as part of the narrative of what was supposed to be an already breaking game.

An in-game screenshot of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. The opponent in this current match-3 fight is "Endless Pets" as represented by a cute picture of a puppy. It uses the ability "Captioned Image" that's described as "This one has text? That's the funniest thing you've ever seen! Removes 10% progress." Behind this overlaid window, you can see a grid of symbols and the main character JJ Hardwell with his moveset underneath.

Banjo clown music has its claws in me.

Simple but effective presentation choices are a Strange Scaffold special power, and they help anchor the experience. J.J.'s various character portraits, from his healthy-but-exasperated starting point to the many stages of injury and stress, are charming in spite of his stock action hero vibes. The assorted dinos you'll meet along the way, including a tiny raptor with a pistol and a clown-faced pterodactyl, feel like the team's artists tried to find the most absurd combination of concepts possible, and they're always fun to discover. And the visual interpretations of things like the internet and clown alley are a treat to behold. The less said the better.

But as is tradition with a Strange Scaffold project, the soundtrack is a standout in this presentation package. David Mason, the composer behind the demented fishing hit Dredge and Strange Scaffold's kidnapping simulator Life Eater, brings a banjo-heavy soundtrack that is literally plucky and captures the "what's going to happen next" energy that tumbles all the way through CRDM3. Shoutout to the jug and jaw harp love shown in this soundtrack, too, really selling the "return to the southern setting" that CRDM3 represents in its fictional universe.

An in-game screenshot of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. The generic action hero star main character, JJ Hardwell, stands with his arms at his sides. His short brown hair is held back by shades on his head and a black bulletproof vest sits above his green shirt. He stands in a black and white void with rocky platforms floating through space. He says: "Although, it seems like life would lose meaning once you've done everything there is to do... Aren't the choices we make with limited time the things that define us? ... Do I have "limited time" anymore?"

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is a personification of both the joy and the frustration of game development in an industry that seems happy to toss developers aside with regularity. When that happens, games like CRDM3 can end up forgotten, their characters left to wander empty halls.

But when passionate folks like the teams at Strange Scaffold and Frosty Pop fight for the marvelously strange ideas, for the oddball characters, and for match-3 games, a clever little project just might make it to your PC against the odds.

P.S. Justice for Dog Huncan.

Video Games Are Good and Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is . . . GREAT. (8.5/10)

+ a hauntingly powerful love letter to cancelled game projects and shuttered game studios, a unique match-3 experience for match-3 freaks, genuinely hilarious bits of industry satire

- match-3 fatigue can set in, inside baseball story may not hit for all gamers, a few minor bugs along the way

The key art of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. J.J. Hardwell, a man with short brown hair, wearing a green t-shirt and a bulletproof vest, cowers against a wall with a pistol in his hand and shades on his forehead. Depicted as shadows against the wall surrounding him, you can see the shadows of multiple dinosaurs and what seems to be a duck closing in on him.

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