The Flow of the Dinosaur game

The Flow of the Dinosaur Game

Video games are a great source of entertainment: they’re fun, they’re absolutely art, and they can bring isolated people together. In this returning series, Jayden Cammarata—Witherly Heights’ game critic—reviews a few that he liked… or didn’t.

By: Jayden Cammarata

The Dinosaur Game is definitely the most recognizable endless runner game. It’s played, or at least seen, by everybody who tries to use Google without an internet connection; this amounts to approximately 3 billion games of it being played each year. (It can also be played with a full-screen mode at chrome://dino. )

In The Dinosaur Game, players control a pixelated t-rex running through an endless desert. It begins moving slowly, but accelerates over time to a set max speed. (Selecting the game window shows a prompt to make the dinosaur start running at its maximum speed immediately, but this function was not implemented properly, and it does nothing.) 

There is no way to win The Dinosaur Game. Players get points from running, and the only goal is to run as long as possible. However, the desert is populated with cacti, as well as hostile pterodactyls, which spawn in the dinosaur’s way. If the T. Rex touches one of them, it dies and stops running. To avoid these obstacles, the player can use the spacebar or the up arrow to jump, and the down arrow to fall faster or, if the dinosaur is already on the ground, duck.

After a certain point, it will become night; for the rest of the game, the world will periodically switch between night and day. This has no effect, other than distracting the player.

The Dinosaur Game has some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, and a story more intricate than the Silmarillion.

That was a joke. It has no music, only sound effects, and its story could be explained in a single sentence. Its graphics are simplistic, perhaps overly so, but readable. The game’s strength is not in its decoration, but in its gameplay. Although the gameplay is simplistic, it excels at putting players into a flow state.

Being in a flow state (or being in the zone) is an enjoyable experience in which someone’s skills at a task are heightened, despite them not paying much attention to the task at hand. It usually happens when somebody has to spend a long time straight doing something which they are good at, usually something that doesn’t involve much thinking. 

Because The Dinosaur Game is so simple, and changes so little over time, it’s very easy to master. Since it has no set ending and no way to pause, a playthrough of it can go on for a long time. Additionally, it involves almost no thinking because its challenge is exclusively based on reaction time. Finally, since a single mistake can end a run of The Dinosaur Game, it is almost impossible to perform well without entering the zone. Because of all of these elements, The Dinosaur Game is very good at putting its users into a flow state, and this makes it fun. 

The Dinosaur Game’s simplicity and repetitiveness help the player master the game easily, which helps them enter a flow state. Therefore, these attributes are integral to the game’s success. However, they are also the game’s major flaw. Because it is so easy to master, and because nothing changes between playthroughs of the game, The Dinosaur Game quickly becomes boring.

Although this is a major flaw, I think it’s one that should be accepted considering what the game was meant to be. It is almost exclusively played by people without access to wifi, so it has to be downloaded ahead of time when Google is downloaded; therefore, it must be small enough not to slow down the download of Google. It’s completely free, so few resources could be dedicated to creating it. Most importantly, it was only meant to be played for a short amount of time while a player’s wifi is down, not as long as I (and many others) have spent on it. I definitely would have liked The Dinosaur Game to be more complex, and have more features and variety, so that it would remain interesting for longer. However, while I think that would have made it better as a game, I think that would have made it worse at what it was meant to be.

The Dinosaur Game is not a complex or beautiful game. It is a simple thing meant to stave off boredom for a minute or two while its player waits for the wifi to come back. Given this, I think its only flaw– its lack of content and replayability– is excusable. And, despite its small size, it’s overall a fun experience, thanks to its mastery of the flow state.

Overall rating: 

6/10

This Game ASAP: A game with more flow than the ocean, despite being set in the desert.

The Deicide Boolean: No.

Tips:

• To change the way the game plays, press f12 to open the Inspect element menu, go to the Console, and run one of the following commands:
  • Runner.instance_.setSpeed(1000) to change the dinosaur’s run speed
  • Runner.instance_.tRex.setJumpVelocity(10) to change the dinosaur’s jump height
  • var original = Runner.prototype.gameOver followed by Runner.prototype.gameOver = function(){} to make the dinosaur immortal
• Look ahead of the dinosaur to give yourself more time to react to obstacles
  • Don’t do this at slower speeds– because the dinosaur is moving slower, it covers less ground with each jump, which means that obstacles (especially the 4-cactus arrangement) will require more precise jumps to clear.
• Pterodactyls flying at head height can be either ducked under or jumped over. Practicing ducking under them lets you jump again sooner, but this is an optimization, and depending on your play style, it might be a distraction that causes more harm than good. 

(Fanart by Ivan Lim)