Dinosaur Game: The Story of Chrome's Offline Easter Egg
The dinosaur game is the most-seen video game in the world, and almost nobody chose to play it. It appears exactly when you did not want it: at the moment your connection drops.
Where it came from
Chrome's offline page used to be a plain error message. The team added a small runner so that a dead connection produced something other than an apology, and the game shipped in 2014. It has been part of Chrome ever since.
Why such a small game stuck
Three design choices explain it:
- Zero setup. No install, no account, no menu. The game is already on screen.
- One verb. Jump. Duck is added later. That is the entire control scheme.
- A visible number. The score is the only thing that goes up, and it is right in front of you.
Nothing about it is original — endless runners predate it by decades. What it got right was placement.
The details most people miss
- The pterodactyls appear only after a certain distance, and they come in three heights
- The ground itself changes texture as the speed climbs
- The game runs on a canvas, which is why it can be dropped into an error page without a framework
- It does not need the network, because everything it uses is already in the browser
Playing it today
You can still reach it with chrome://dino in the address bar, or by going offline. If you want a version that is always available and adds a little to the formula, DinoHop on this site is a jump-and-duck runner with candies, enemies and a speed increase every ten points.
For the mechanics, see how to play. For the history of the code, see dino game google code.