Google Dinosaur — the T-Rex Game from Google Chrome

The Google Dinosaur game is popular with players all over the world, yet not everyone realises that the little T-Rex can be brought to life.

Many people have seen the picture of a dinosaur on their smartphone, laptop, or computer in the Google Chrome browser. Just click the image and the dinosaur starts running forward.

To start, press the spacebar or the up arrow. The same keys are used to jump. You can crouch with the down arrow. On mobile devices, all you have to do is tap the screen.

The player's goal is to score as many points as possible. The speed increases over time, and day gradually turns into night. The dinosaur faces obstacles that you have to dodge. If you run into one, the T-Rex is out and the game restarts — and so it goes, round after round.

Google created the game in 2014 for the Chrome browser, and it appears whenever you open Chrome without an internet connection — a fun way to pass the time until you are back online. The T-Rex was built by a small team: designer Sébastien Gabriel, senior designer Alan Bettes, and engineer Edward Jung, who wrote the code. In 2018 Google revealed that the Google Dinosaur is launched more than 270 million times every month.

The main character is a pixel dinosaur. But why a dinosaur, rather than a little man or a turtle? Designer Sébastien Gabriel explained that the game invites you back to a prehistoric era — a time long before anyone had heard of the Internet. It turned out to be a fitting symbol for being offline.

Every player has their own high score, shown in the top-right corner. If you reach 300 points in your first game, that number becomes your record. Score higher next time and your record goes up.

It might seem like the game could go on forever. In fact, the developers set a hard limit: reaching the maximum score would take about 17 million years — roughly how long the T-Rex actually roamed the Earth.