The dino game belongs to a whole genre: the endless runner. Here's the quick story of how it came to be.
The core idea
An endless runner moves your character forward automatically and forever. You don't control speed or direction much — you just react, usually with a single input, avoiding obstacles until you slip up. The genre lives or dies on that one-more-go feeling.
The milestones
- Early auto-runners established the constant-forward-motion formula.
- Temple Run and Subway Surfers turned it into a mobile phenomenon with swipes and lanes.
- The Chrome dino (2014) stripped the genre back to its purest form: one button, one dinosaur, no menus. We compare it to others in dino game vs other runners.
Why the dino endures
Most runners chase bigger graphics and more mechanics. The dino went the other way — and its simplicity is exactly why it's still played hundreds of millions of times a month. More on its origins in our dino game history.
Our Flappy Dino and Dino Jump are little experiments in the same one-input spirit.
Feel the genre for yourself on the home page.