Dino Run

You're a raptor at the site of the meteor crash that killed the dinosaurs. Run like hell.

Play it for free here.


 * Alliteration: The speedrun levels "Stego Stampede", "Meteor Meltdown", "Dactyl Dodge" and "Dino Derby.
 * Advancing Wall of Doom: The whole game. Luckily, you can get caught up in the edge of the wall and live (and get bonus points for it.)
 * Anachronism Stew: No stegosaurs, diplodocoids or brachiosaurids survived to the K-Pg extinction.
 * Collection Sidequest: The larger eggs of other species are pretty well hidden, and sometimes even require a bit of backtracking (yes, in an AWoD game) to grab. Of course, you're rewarded plenty of DNA and bones for finding them, so if you wanna upgrade your abilities and buy things without grinding, it may be in your best interest to start searching.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: Your dino turns green after grabbing a speed boost, purple after a jump boost, and red after a strength boost.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Running above/through active volcanoes? No problem. Running on a flaming meteor? No problem. (Or is the latter another trope entirely?)
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: You can be  only if you play on Insane difficulty. The other endings have you.
 * Easter Egg: Dino Paradise.
 * Foe-Tossing Charge: Hitting the speed boost button with 500 DNA lets your dino run through most obstacles, including boulders and other dinosaurs.
 * This also happens when you get a strength boost.
 * Harder Than Hard: Insane mode.
 * Helpful Mook: Any pterodactyls that aren't flashing red and flying to the left can be jumped into, and they'll actually carry you quite a ways before dropping you. Very much helpful in levels with lots of uphill running. In later levels, there are also Parasaurolophus you can jump on the back of for a free ride.
 * Interface Screw: When the wall of doom gets closer, the screen gets darker to the point where you can barely see your dino, much less the obstacles you're trying to avoid. Right before the wall overtakes you, it will block out most of the screen. Have fun trying to platform at that point.
 * Justified Extra Lives: They're called "time shifts".
 * And the game pause is called "time freeze". (Is there a trope for this?)
 * Made of Iron: Boulder hits your dino in the head? No problem. Caught in a meteorite impact? No problem. Run headlong into a Triceratops? No problem. As long as the wall doesn't catch up, your dino is A-OK.
 * Though it might be less a case of being invincible and more a case of your dino being pumped up in too much adrenaline (because, you know, being about to die incinerated in the pyroclastic flow is kinda worrying) to notice. Doesn't explain being caught in a meteor impact or falling into lava, though.
 * Mighty Glacier: The ceratopsids and stegosaurs can destroy small boulders, but plod along very slowly (often in the wrong direction) and are nowhere as agile as the player dinosaur.
 * Mood Whiplash: Playing on Easy results in 1 less stage before the final level. This is rather jarring because the level in between serves as the moment of the game where you know it's all going downhill, where the environment becomes dark and overtly hostile. Averted if you play through on Medium or higher.
 * Oh Crap: You'll be saying this whenever the wall gets close. The dino also gets a "!" over his head when this happens. Level 6 also counts: Instead of the green fields with happy music, you open to an almost completely black screen with a much darker and more ominous music.
 * One Dino Limit: Played straight when a dino successfully makes it to a challenge ending, since you get a differently colored dino to play as for a new game. (While you might think you got the yellow -your first- dino again at first, note that there are patterns on it that make it different.) Averted if you fail, as though the screen says "Your dino is extinct", returning to the main menu still shows the "extinct" dino ready to go again.
 * Perhaps there's a "time reset" or something that renders the "extinct" dino revived.
 * Outrun the Fireball
 * Ptero-Soarer: The pterosaurs can grab things with their feet.
 * Retraux
 * Seldom-Seen Species: Among the bonus eggs you can find are those of the hadrosaur Olorotitan, the oviraptorosaur Rinchenia, and the megalosauroid Magnosaurus.
 * Stock Dinosaurs: Of course, with the overall design of the game being very stylized, it's not really possible to identify the dinosaurs down to their specific genus except through Word of God. However, it's clear that all the dinosaurs belong to stock clades (ceratopsids, sauropods, ankylosaurs, parasaurolophinins, stegosaurs) or have stock body plans (small theropods).
 * Sugar Bowl: Look at it. Cutesy 8-bit graphics, dinosaurs with beady dot eyes, vibrantly colored settings… What Could Possibly Go Wrong??
 * Sugar Apocalypse. That's what.
 * Time Trial: The speedrun levels. Somehow though, it's actually harder to keep ahead of the wall in some of the levels.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Most of the larger dinos (and the red pterodactyls) actually run toward the doom wall, instead of away from it.
 * The red pterodactyls can get away with it because, they are on fire after all.
 * Try Not to Die
 * The red pterodactyls can get away with it because, they are on fire after all.
 * Try Not to Die