Dino Runner

How to play the Dino game online

Press Space or tap the screen and your T-rex starts running. For the first three seconds the desert is clear, so you can settle in. Then the obstacles start coming from the right, and your only job is to get past each one without touching it.

Cacti grow on the ground. They come one at a time or in small groups of two or three, and you jump over them. Once you are going fast enough, pterodactyls join in. One hit from anything ends the run. Tap or press Space again and a fresh run starts right away.

Dino game controls on keyboard and phone

The jump is not a fixed size. Hold the jump key or keep your finger down for a fuller, higher jump. Let go quickly for a short hop. Short hops land sooner, which helps when obstacles are close together.

Pressing Down while you are in the air makes the dino drop fast. This is one of the most useful moves in the game, because it gets you back on the ground in time for the next obstacle.

• Space, Up arrow, Enter, click or tap: jump (hold for higher)
• Down arrow or swipe down: duck
• Down arrow in the air: fast drop
• P or Escape: pause and resume

Cacti, pterodactyls and when to duck

Small cacti can appear in groups from the very start. Groups of the tall cacti only show up once the speed has picked up. The game never sends the same kind of obstacle three times in a row, so expect the mix to change.

Pterodactyls first appear at around 450 points and fly at three heights. The height tells you what to do:

• Low pterodactyl: it flies near the ground, so jump over it. Ducking will not save you.
• Middle pterodactyl: duck under it, or jump over it if you time it well.
• High pterodactyl: it passes over your head, so just keep running.
• Some pterodactyls fly a little faster or slower than the ground moves, so watch them rather than counting on a fixed rhythm.

Scoring, speed and night mode

Your score goes up with the distance you run, so the faster you go, the quicker it climbs. Your current score and your best, marked HI, are shown in the top right corner. Every 100 points the score flashes with a little sound.

The speed rises steadily the longer you survive and reaches its maximum at roughly 1,650 points. From there it stays the same. Every 700 points, night falls for about twelve seconds and the colours flip to dark before day comes back. Night does not change the speed or the obstacles. It just looks different, which can catch you off guard the first time.

Tips for a higher Dino score

Most runs end because of timing, not because a gap is impossible. These habits help.

• Use the fast drop. Jump, clear the cactus, then tap Down to land early. It saves you on quick back to back obstacles.
• Short hops for single small cacti, full jumps for wide groups. A long jump over a small cactus leaves you in the air too long.
• Jump earlier as the speed rises. The dino covers more ground in the air at high speed, so start your jump a little sooner than you did at the beginning.
• Look at the pterodactyl's height first. High ones need nothing, middle ones are easiest to duck, low ones must be jumped.
• Stay calm when night falls. Nothing about the obstacles changes, so keep the same timing.
• Pause with P or Escape if you need a break. The game also pauses on its own if you switch tabs.

Your best score

Dino Runner saves your best score in your browser on this device and shows it as HI next to your current score. Clearing your browser data, or playing on another device or browser, starts it again from zero.

Where the dinosaur game came from

Google added a small T-rex game to the Chrome browser in 2014. It appears on the page that says there is no internet, and you start it by pressing Space. It became one of the best known browser games in the world, especially in places where connections drop now and then. Many people still open chrome://dino just to play it.

Dino Runner is our own original game inspired by that idea, with the same simple jump and duck rules. It is not made by or connected to Google.