Dino Run DX

you're as beautiful as the day i lost you..

If you liked the original Dino Run you'll definitely enjoy this, if not end up longing for the happier days of your childhood. Back when all that mattered after school was going on Miniclip and showing your friends what your favorite games were.

It's a fun platformer that brings me back to the golden era of being chronically online playing games like this as a child

Good game, you can turn your brain off and watch 50 episodes of The Sopranos. Let the dinosaur go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr from extinction <3

1000

Thank you for bringing me nostalgia. It almost brings tears to me when i saw one of my favorite web games I played back in my childhood appears on Steam

If you don't like racing games or dinos you won't like this game. Its pretty much what the title states! DINO RUN! the more races you win the more running skills and masks you unlock. I used to play this game all the time as a teen and in collage when i got really angry, the game was free to play online then and there was always a huge bunch of people online to race against. For some reason running my dino as fast as I could whether i won the race or not, helped to calm me down LOL...I did get pretty good at it though.. I think a lot of other player thought i cheated somehow when i started getting really good (but i never did...i just played a LOT). Its sad cause the funnest part of the game was racing with other real people however now that feature of the game seems pretty lame cause you just can't get others to race with you most of the time the way it is set up now. it used to be peeps would keep racing with you weather or not you won or lost and you could keep getting better...now it seems either nobody is online to race or when there is someone, they only want to race you once and quit after that, which is no fun at all and means you can't get any better on the multiplayer mode as the only way to get better is keep racing! Still the game is a bit nostalgic for me, and it can still be fun on single player mode if you haven't played it in a while and feel like running around as a dino.

a classic from 2008, brought to steam in 2015 and casually reviewed by me in 2025.

Dino Run DX

raptor go weeeeeeeeee

I played this game so much as a kid! The nostalgia is REAL!!!!

anyone remember this classic from addictinggames dot com or other similar websites back in the day?

Brilliant

you can ride the dinosuars like horseys

It's amazing how much of this game remained part of my muscle memory

A blast from the past, Dino Run DX keeps all the charm from its browser days while adding new challenges and cosmetics to play with. Levels are short enough to get a few runs in between classes or before work and can lull you into the classic 'just one more run' mindset. Some of the physics and code are buggy: a few completed runs failed to trigger the end-screen, forcing me to restart the game while losing that run's progress (happened once after beating Insane Challenge, so I had to re-beat it for it to count); boulders and pterodactyls rarely clip through the floor or scenery, and the Bronze/Silver/Gold trophy achievements only triggered all-at-once when I got all the Gold trophies and not a collection before, but these are minor setbacks in an otherwise enjoyable game.

I never want to see another Flaming Hot Chili Ptero again.

dinosaur

This game is amazing and never gets boring. It keeps you on your toes and has amazing music and graphics. Would highly recommend!

As a kid who sunk hours into this game after school, I can say with confidence that it scratches that nostalgia itch. Worth every penny and much, much more.

UYTC6K RD

cool dinosor game

I like it when the flying dinosaur picks me up :)

Nailed all the badges on Kongregate many years ago. Just did it again here on Steam. Great game and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

In my Audiosurf review, I wrote about nostalgia and the lens through which certain games inevitably have to be viewed. In that review, I talked about the memories the game evoked, the sensation of sitting in a too small, too expensive flat, curled around the one game I had that wasn't pirated, making a date night out of what I had, and loving every minute of it. It's impossible for me to disentangle the memories of playing the game from the game itself, and my review reflected that.

I'm in a similar position with Dino Run. Though its Steam release date is 2015, Dino Run was originally one of the many, many flash games that populated the internet in the early 2000s. Released in 2008, I first started playing it when I found it via Stumbleupon shortly after its release. It became one of the games that defined my high school experience. Loading it up immediately conjures up memories of lingering in dim school corridors with my (then) boyfriend, giggling and passing a laptop back and forth, playing the game less to play it, and more to quietly exchange forbidden kisses, keeping an ever-watchful eye out for the chaperones who were meant to be preventing us from doing exactly what we were doing.

Look, I was seventeen. We're all dramatic at seventeen.

Playing Dino Run, then, is less the experience of playing this game, and more the experience of looking back almost twenty years at who I was, who I've been, and what a game like this can even mean any more. It's the process of contextualising memories and sifting through what's real and what's created, and being left with the question of whether it even matters.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3354440598

Dino Run is a side-scrolling, arcade-style game. You play as a dinosaur fleeing the coming apocalypse, trying to find shelter in some promised, far-off cave. Along the way, there are obstacles to leap over, eggs to collect, snacks to enjoy, and other, generally larger, dinosaurs to harass.

Dino Run is not a particularly complex game. While it does have systems to upgrade the dinosaur and the potential to gather special power-ups and do little tricks here and there, these aren't strictly necessary to achieve the end goal. The player can make it to the end of the level - and survival - through their tenacity and ability to jump at appropriate times alone.

As a game, Dino Run does fine. It is neither the most complex or engaging game ever, nor does it have anything particularly off-putting. Its music is fun and matches the silly, pixelated art. The levels repeat in the same, memorisable patterns, but there are a variety of modes and enough randomness to ensure it never gets strictly boring. Having an upgrade system and hidden bonuses throughout the levels gives an incentive for the player to try different approaches, but making them optional also means there is no obligation to do anything but just run forward towards safety. Indeed, when I play this game, that's all I ever really do. I charge my little dinosaur forward, jumping over rocks and flinging myself at pterodactyls, ignoring most bonuses and power-ups, and instead just seeing how quickly I can make it to the sanctuary at the end of the level.

I think how I play this game is a reflection of the game and the narrative surrounding it. It's also a reflection of what I actually want out of it, and the story it's trapped in.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3354441061

I rarely play Dino Run anymore, not because it isn't fun - it is, albeit in short bursts and when I'm looking to kill a few minutes - but because it's reminiscent of a time and a place I'm no longer in. This is a game that belongs to seventeen year old me, discovering the wonders of the world for the first time, not the me currently sitting on my couch, sipping at tea and struggling to articulate why the nostalgia this game evokes is simultaneous the best thing for it and the worst.

Throughout Dino Run, the player plays as a dinosaur, fleeing for a sanctuary that looks like the world they're leaving behind. It's replete with snacks and bonus points and everything the dinosaur has been forced to skip in its mad dash to get to the end, but above all else, is a place that lies beyond the havoc occurring just outside the rock door. If they were to step outside, the dinosaur would be confronted with the devastation of the world it came from and would be forced to recognise that there is no going back. It can either be crushed beneath a new reality, or it can stay in its tiny, perfectly preserved bubble. It, of course, chooses to stay.

I don't blame it. I do the same thing. As do, I suspect, most of the people playing this game in 2024.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3354441508

I have been receiving e-mails from the developers of this game, Pixeljam, since 2013. Scanning through my inbox, the earliest e-mail I have from them is from November 2013. The most recent is from September. For eleven years, I have been receiving e-mails with updates about Dino Run 2. For eleven years, I've gotten ideas of what it could be, concept art, design updates, and promises of multiplayer, slurping animations, and trees. For my entire adult life, this dev team has been working on some kind of continuation of this game, and they have yet to bring it to fruition.

I don't think this is a failure on the part of the devs. The nature of creative industries is to be fickle, and which games get made and which don't feels less like the product of whether something is a good idea, and more on random chance. Some get funded, some get their big, lucky break, and most do not.

And some have their break, but at a point where all the good it does them is to contain them in a particular bubble. They race forward, escaping the doom of never being seen only to find that what awaits them at the other end is an artificial bubble, sealing them into a particular time and place that can never be recaptured.

If you browse the comments on this game on Steam, you'll see that the vast majority of them are about playing this game as a kid, or about how much joy they get from the act of being nostalgic. There are none about the game itself or about how it plays as a game because, for its audience, it has ceased to be a game. It is a memory of a time that can't be recaptured, where nothing of any greater substance is wanted or required.

I'm no different. This game is my memories of a secluded corridor, of first loves, of furtive glances searching for the ever-looming authority figure.

But when I want to get lost in those memories again, it's Dino Run I turn to. I return to that tiny bubble and let the doom lash the outside of my door, safe in this bubble I've created.

Developer: Pixeljam
Genre: Arcade
Year: 2015
Country: United States
Language: English
Play Time: 5-10 minutes/run
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/cfOtL_5rQMM

If you enjoyed this review, please check out my other reviews and my curator page. Thanks for reading!

Dino run! I remember this game as a browser game back in the day, and also some of the other ones like Snow pinball. So glad you're revitalizing these since Flash is gone! I like the variety of retro styles covered in the games, from a traditional NES-style pixel style to Atari and vector. One of my favourites from Pixeljam. Seems like this isn't the only game with an apocalypse as theme. I will say I was surprised back in the day that this game had an ending which I loved, as I thought it was just going to be endless. A good variety of dinos that do various things, and I like the apocalypse being depicted as a wall of doom.

A classic

that's a nostalgic game
but flash is down

epic

They do be runnin

10/10 because childhood

One of the GREATEST games of all time, I remember I used to go over to my friends house when i was a kid and play this on there parents laptop on some old website, but we could only play for like 10 minits before her older sister kicked us off.

Extermily biased 10/10

very intens

Oh, god, they're all going to die... and no matter how fast I run, I can't save them all...
A very nostalgic and fun game! I'm gonna need to play it more for sure. It's fast-paced and fun and kind of bleak but in a low-stakes sort of way!
It's very funny seeing Wilson Don't Starve and Freddy Fazbear Five Night's on dinosaur bodies.

This game gets a dragon rating of 7/10 because dinosaurs are not dragons, but boy, are they close.

fun, cute, wholesome, awesome hats, overall just lit