What is Dino vs Player?
Dino vs Player flips the offline dinosaur game on its head. Normally you are the T-Rex, hammering the space bar to survive whatever the game throws at you. Here the computer plays the dinosaur — it runs, jumps and ducks entirely on its own — and you take the other chair. You are the one building the obstacle course, and you win by breaking the AI's rhythm.
How to play
- Cactus — drops a cactus on the horizon, alone or in a cluster of up to three. The dino has to jump it.
- Pterodactyl — sends a bird in at one of three heights. A low one has to be jumped, a middle one has to be ducked under, and a high one sails harmlessly over the dino's head.
- Auto obstacles — on by default: the course generates itself, accelerates, and tightens up over the first few minutes. Keep tapping the other buttons on top of it to pile on the pressure, or switch it off if you would rather place every obstacle yourself.
- AI vision — draws the trajectory the planner has committed to, so you can watch the dino think a second and a half ahead of itself.
Timing beats volume. A cactus placed while the dino is already committed to a jump lands where it has the least room to recover, and a middle-height pterodactyl tucked in behind a cactus asks it to duck and jump almost at once. That is the shot you are hunting for. The keyboard shortcuts 1, 2, A, V, P and R do the same as the buttons.
How scoring works
You score by making the dino crash. Every time the T-Rex touches a cactus or a pterodactyl you placed, your score goes up by one and that obstacle is removed. The dino is never eliminated, so there is no game over and the run simply continues. The board also counts how many obstacles it dodged cleanly and shows its live survival rate, so you can see exactly how much of a dent you are making. On the game canvas itself, the counter on the right is the distance the dino has run and HI is the furthest it has managed in this session.
How the AI dino works
It plans rather than reacts. On every frame the dino re-simulates the next two seconds of the world, including obstacle positions, its own gravity, jump arcs, fast-fall and duck states, and runs a beam search over the possible action sequences. It picks the sequence that takes the fewest hits, and among equally safe options it prefers to stay on the ground as long as possible so it can still respond to whatever you add next. Because the search uses exactly the physics the game runs, a plan that survives in simulation survives on screen — and when contact really is unavoidable, the same search picks the route that costs you the fewest points.
How it differs from the Chrome dino game
The roles are swapped. In Chrome's offline dinosaur game you control the T-Rex and try to survive obstacles the game spawns. Here the computer plays the dinosaur and you are the level designer who decides what appears and when. Everything else is kept faithful on purpose: the artwork is the authentic offline-game pixel art, the jump arc, collision boxes and obstacle sizes are reproduced frame for frame, and the game still flips to night mode as the distance climbs.
Frequently asked questions
How do I score points in Dino vs Player?
You score by making the dino crash. Every time the T-Rex touches a cactus or a pterodactyl you placed, your score goes up by one and that obstacle is removed. The dino is never eliminated, so there is no game over and the run simply continues. The board also counts how many obstacles it dodged cleanly and shows its live survival rate, so you can see exactly how much of a dent you are making.
Is this the same as the Chrome dinosaur game?
No, the roles are swapped. In Chrome's offline dinosaur game you control the T-Rex and try to survive obstacles the game spawns. Here the computer plays the dinosaur and you are the level designer who decides what appears and when. The artwork is the authentic offline-game pixel art and the jump physics are reproduced frame for frame, but this is an independent fan project and is not affiliated with Google or Chrome.
Does the dino ever lose or die?
No. A hit does not end the run, it scores a point for you and clears that obstacle. The dino keeps running forever, so there is no fail state and no restart button. Your score measures how badly you outsmarted the AI rather than how long anyone survived.
How does the AI decide when to jump or duck?
It plans rather than reacts. On every frame the dino re-simulates the next two seconds of the world, including obstacle positions, its own gravity, jump arcs, fast-fall and duck states, and runs a beam search over the possible action sequences. It picks the sequence that takes the fewest hits, and among equally safe options it prefers to stay on the ground as long as possible so it can still respond to whatever you add next. Because the search uses exactly the physics the game runs, a plan that survives in simulation survives on screen.
Can the AI dino actually be beaten?
Yes, but you have to earn it. Obstacles cannot be stacked on top of each other because a minimum spacing is enforced, so the way in is to fill that spacing completely and give the dino no room to land between jumps. Under a course of back-to-back cacti placed as fast as the game allows, the planner still clears roughly nineteen out of every twenty. When contact genuinely is unavoidable it picks the route that costs you the fewest points.
What does auto obstacle mode do?
Auto obstacle builds the course for you: obstacles spawn on their own, the world speed climbs and the spacing tightens over the first few minutes. On its own it will not beat the dino, because the planner handles a generated course indefinitely. It works best as a rhythm section — let the automatic spawns occupy the AI, then drop your own cactus at the moment it commits to a jump.
Do I need to install anything or create an account?
No. Dino vs Player is a single web page that runs entirely in your browser. There is no download, no sign-up, no ads and no tracking, and the artwork ships inside the page itself. It is free, works on phones, tablets and desktop, and once the page has loaded it keeps running even if your connection drops.