The Dinosaur Game[1] (also known as the Chrome Dino)[2] is a browser game developed by Google and built into the Google Chrome web browser. The player guides a pixelated Tyrannosaurus rex across a side-scrolling landscape, avoiding obstacles to achieve a higher score. The game was created by members of the Chrome UX team in 2014.

Gameplay

When a user attempts to navigate to a web page on Google Chrome while being offline, the browser notifies the user that they are not connected to the Internet, with an illustration of a pixelated Tyrannosaurus rex shown on the page.[3] The game can then be launched either by pressing space or ↑ on desktop, or by tapping the dinosaur on Android or iOS mobile devices. Additionally, the game can be accessed by inputting chrome://dino or chrome://network-error/-106 into the Omnibox.[4]

During the game, the dinosaur continuously moves from left to right across a black-and-white desert landscape, with the player attempting to avoid oncoming obstacles such as cacti and pterosaurs by jumping or ducking.[5] Pressing space, ↑, or tapping the dinosaur on mobile devices will cause the dinosaur to “leap”, while pressing the ↓ key will cause the dinosaur to “crouch”. As the game progresses, the speed of play gradually increases until the user hits an obstacle or a pterosaur, prompting an instant game over.

Once the player reaches around 700 points, the game switches from dark gray graphics on a white background to pale gray graphics on a black background, representing a shift from day to night, with daytime sky graphics also becoming nighttime sky graphics.[a] The color scheme then alternates as the game progresses.[6][7] The game was designed to reach its maximum score after approximately 17 million years of playtime, in reference to how long the T-Rex existed before it went extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[8]

If a network administrator disables the Dinosaur Game, an error message appears when attempting to play the game, which features an image of a meteor heading towards the player character.[9]

Development

The game was created by members of the Chrome UX team in 2014, which consisted of Sebastien Gabriel, Alan Bettes, and Edward Jung.[10] Gabriel designed the player character, named the “Lonely T-Rex”.[3] During development, the game was given the codename “Project Bolan”, in reference to Marc Bolan, the lead singer of the band T. Rex. The developers chose the dinosaur theme as a reference to the game’s function, a joke that not having an internet connection is equivalent to living in the “prehistoric ages“. The game was released in September 2014; initially, it did not work on older devices, so the code was updated and re-released in December of the same year.[11] The pterosaurs were added as obstacles with a browser update in 2015.[12]

In September 2018, an Easter egg was added to the game in celebration of Chrome’s 10th birthday and the game’s fourth birthday, with a birthday cake appearing in the desert and a birthday hat appearing on the Lonely T-Rex if the cake is “eaten”.[13] In November of the same year, Google introduced a feature to save the player’s high score.[14] The game’s source code is available on the Chromium site.[15]

In 2021, Google introduced a widget in March for iOS 14 which led players to chrome://dino;[16] a similar widget was introduced to Android later that year.[17] In July, an Olympic torch Easter egg for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics simulating various Olympic activities was added.[18] Upon reaching the torch, the dino transforms into various Olympic games such as swimming, running, and many others. Instead of the usual cacti and pterosaur obstacles, the dino now encounters challenges related to the Olympics.[19]

Reception

The game received widespread recognition, with the creators revealing in September 2018 that approximately 270 million games were played monthly.[8]

In popular culture

The Dinosaur Game is referenced in the “couch gag” opening segment of the season 34 premiere of The Simpsons, “Habeas Tortoise“.[20][21][22]

Related media

In May 2020, a Microsoft Edge update added Surf, a game where players control a surfer attempting to evade obstacles and collect powerups. Like the Dinosaur Game, it is accessible from an error page when the browser is offline. The game allows for character customization and multiple control schemes.[23]

In August 2020, MSCHF and 100 Thieves partnered to create a modified version of the game titled Dino Swords, which featured a small arsenal of weapons and time-slowing pills; when mismanaged, the weapons could backfire and harm the dinosaur.[24]

See also

• List of Google Easter eggs

Notes

References

Categories:

• 2014 video games
• Action games
• Video games about dinosaurs
• Easter egg (media)
• Endless runner games
• Google Chrome
• Google Chrome games
• Monochrome video games
• Video games developed in the United States