Artist Statement
We created Dieno Run to reimagine the nostalgic Chrome Dino game as a faster-paced, more dynamic experience. While the original was simple, our version introduces chaos in a playful way, adding obstacles like meme faces, charging dinosaurs, and tiny rocks. Additionally, we gave Dino an upgrade, introducing purchasable weapons to help him fight back. Our unique twist: a dinosaur who once ran from boredom now has to survive a resurgence of internet-connection-born obstacles
We built Dieno Run as a space to foster challenge, fantasy, and sensory fun, where players stay on their toes and react fast. The tone is playful with a sense of urgency. It’s designed for people who enjoy difficult games, who get bored in class and want something that moves fast and keeps their brain buzzing. It’s a game meant to overstimulate, but in a good way.
Our values include challenge, maximalism, thrill, and excitement. We bring these to life through mechanics like power-ups, dynamics such as evolving enemy patterns, and clean aesthetics that evoke adrenaline, nostalgia, and fun. Our MVP captures this world with core level design, simple aesthetics, and zooming enemies.
At its core, Dieno Run is about more than survival. It’s about embracing chaos and adapting to a world that’s constantly changing.
Concept Model
Our concept model highlights key parts of our MVP for Dieno Run. For example, how players interact with the game through the keys needed to play. Additionally, we can see what obstacles, weapons, and power-ups are included in Dieno Run to foster challenge, fantasy, and sensory types of fun.
Initial Decisions About Formal Elements and Values
The emergence of Dieno Run came from the Chrome Dino game
From the outset, we set out to reimagine the Chrome Dino game as something more chaotic, overstimulating, and action-packed. Using the MDA framework, we designed our mechanics around an endless runner core with power-ups and hazards. These mechanics create dynamics of high-speed reaction, adaptation, and risk-reward decisions. The intended aesthetic is one of sensory overload because we wanted players to feel surprised, overwhelmed, and energized every time they play. Our target audience is players who crave challenge and fast-paced gameplay, especially those familiar with the original Dino game and looking for a wild twist on it.
From Our Team’s Concept Doc
From Milo’s Individual Concept Doc
In terms of formal elements, the player controls a single character with the objective of surviving as long as possible. The game is bounded by a moving window of play space, forcing continuous forward momentum. The core conflict arises from navigating a constant stream of obstacles and enemies, with power-ups and weapons acting as limited resources to aid survival. While the game includes a finite set of levels, the outcome depends on how far players progress and how well they perform, leaving room for replayability and score improvement rather than a single win condition.
Our initial values are centered on humor, intensity, and surprise. We wanted to take the familiar, relatively calming experience of the original Dino game and transform it into something fast-paced, unpredictable, and overwhelming. The mix of art styles, ranging from pixelated to more detailed and polished visuals, supports our goal of visual chaos. Each design choice was made to heighten difficulty, create unexpected moments, and keep players on edge.
While we didn’t explicitly design around accessibility or inclusion during this MVP phase, we did prioritize intuitive controls and simple input schemes (such as the spacebar and arrow keys) to keep the game approachable. In future iterations, we’d consider adding features like visual scaling options or a toned-down mode for players who may be sensitive to motion or screen clutter.
Scope of the Game
Our goal was to build a strong MVP that captures the core mechanics and experience of Dieno Run without overextending beyond what we could realistically develop. We focused on the essential gameplay loop: fast-paced obstacle navigation, power-up collection, and visual chaos across distinct levels. Rather than creating a truly endless runner, we designed a limited set of levels that escalate in difficulty and variety.
We prioritized features that best reflected our design values, including momentum-based gameplay, increasing difficulty, and moment-to-moment unpredictability. We intentionally left out features like boss fights and alternate player abilities to keep the game focused and playable, allowing us to concentrate on refining the core experience. Our approach allowed us to build a game that feels complete and representative of our vision, while still leaving room for future expansion.
Diagram of our MVP Scope
In the future, it would be interesting to see how we could monetize Dieno Run. One idea that came about was including ad’s as obstacles and if the player got hit they would be presented with an ad. Additionally, some things that were out of our scope were the occupations which essentially worked like skins. They would give players a certain discount depending on what skin was selected to play with. In future iterations, we would have implemented this mechanic to add to the chaos and fun of Dieno Run.
Testing Iteration
Playtest 1
Who Playtested:
A classmate from our lecture.
Learning Goals:
We wanted to validate our core concept through our Figma Prototype (image below), to understand what types of chaos and challenge players found enjoyable, and we wanted to begin identifying what players might want to see in Dieno Run.
Guiding Questions:
- What do you think of the concept?
- What would you like to see in the game?
- What types of challenges do you find fun or engaging?
What Went Well:
Our playtester responded positively to our core concept and found the idea “cool.” She connected it to games like Jetpack Joyride, which validated that we were hitting the direction of Dieno Run (endless runner). She also appreciated the chaotic elements we described and was excited by the possibility of the game.
What Didn’t Go Well:
We realized that our initial prototype lacked clarity on level progression. Our playtester asked: What determines the end of a level? What’s the end goal? These were questions we hadn’t fully resolved. Her feedback revealed that we needed to define the game structure more explicitly and give players a clear sense of progression and purpose.
Key Takeaways/Changes We Made:
From this playtest, we realized the importance of establishing narrative and purpose early on. We established that we wanted to focus on an embedded narrative. We knew our game would be less narrative-driven meaning there was opportunity to weave it in during our onboarding. Drawing from the MDA framework, we saw that our simple and fun aesthetics were received well. Additionally, we began thinking about onboarding through a tutorial, and started ideating more mechanics in the form of weapons, obstacles, and a storyline to tie everything together. Essentially, scoping the MVP’s features. Pertaining to our learning goal, the types of fun (sensory, challenge, fantasy) were applauded and we saw potential in this direction. During this stage, there were no major changes but we moved on from the Figma Prototype to building the actual game.
Some Ideas we brainstormed after Playtest 1
Our Figma Prototype
Playtest 2
Who Playtested:
Our classmates from our section tested the game during a section presentation.
Learning Goals:
We aimed to test difficulty balance, uncover sources of friction in the gameplay experience, and gauge player reactions to visuals and mechanics.
Guiding Questions:
- How do you feel about the difficulty? Is it too hard?
- Was anything frustrating or unclear?
- What stood out to you visually or mechanically?
What Went Well:
Players really liked the visual design of the dinosaur character. The aesthetic received positive comments, and this affirmed our art direction. There was also curiosity about the mechanics, like auto-jump, which showed players were thinking about how movement could evolve.
What Didn’t Go Well:
Several people struggled to get past level two, which suggested a sharp difficulty spike. There was also feedback about the hitbox feeling too large, which made gameplay feel unforgiving. Players expressed a desire for a save or checkpoint system, especially because repeated deaths meant starting over, which quickly became frustrating. One player noted that adding even more elements might feel overwhelming. A bug/error was also reported during our section playtest.
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
From this playtest, we learned that developing a challenge type of fun requires players to not abandon the game. Drawing from our feedback, we started ideating how we could help players feel like this game was in fact beatable or not “too hard.” We decided to spread out the difficulty increasing the levels from 3 to 10. Additionally, we began thinking more about the narrative of Dieno Run. In the image below, we wrote out a first draft of the embedded narrative we wanted to incorporate. Noting back to our learning goal, the visual UI of our game was applauded and we were confident in the aesthetics of Dieno Run moving forward.
Our Narrative Draft From Our Notes
Playtest 3
Who Playtested:
A classmate from lecture.
Learning Goals:
We wanted to assess how well obstacles/ formal elements communicated their purpose of being internet inspired and humorous. At this stage, we had a “nerf gun” weapon and we wanted to see if using it was intuitive.
Guiding Questions:
- What do you think of the new obstacles?
- What do you think of the Dino coin?
- What would you want to see from Dino?
- Is the game easy to understand? Are the mechanics intuitive?
What Went Well:
The player found the meme face obstacle “funny,” reaffirming our strategy of humor-driven aesthetics. They liked the shop system mechanic and appreciated the simplicity of the design, which supported our decision to keep visuals clean/simple amid chaotic mechanics. The Dino coin also got a positive reaction after we explained the Bitcoin reference.
What Didn’t Go Well:
The player forgot to equip the weapon on their first run, this made us ponder about how we could onboard people. Additionally, our playtester asked how to shoot the “nerf gun.” They mentioned that the game is intuitive but we needed to have a tutorial to cue them in our world. Likewise, they expressed a desire for a checkpoint. This continued to make us reevaluate the difficulty curve of Dieno Run. Our playtester also wished Dino had more actions or abilities
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
We realized the importance of proper onboarding and visual cues. Moving forward, we began prototyping a tutorial. Referring back to our learning goal, we noticed that our playtester started to understand the narrative only after we explained it. Because of this, when designing the tutorial, we wanted to include cues that would help build up the embedded narrative. The idea that these added elements are part of a resurgence of internet. At this stage, we also added a new ducking animation for Dino (though it didn’t make it into the MVP), which was our major change. Similarly, Dino himself now had a running animation.
Playtest 4
Who Playtested:
More classmates from section.
Learning Goals:
We were now investigating whether our chaotic concept could be scaled meaningfully, what mechanics felt incomplete or under explained, and how to make the game’s narrative feel more embedded.
Guiding Questions:
- Thoughts on the overall concept?
- What are some points of contention?
- How could we improve the game?
- What do you think our narrative is?
What Went Well:
The core concept was still resonating and our playtester called it fun and even suggested that we should make it wilder. Positive feedback on visuals remained consistent. Additionally, our values of chaos, maximalism, challenge, and thrill were all affirmed during this playtest.
What Didn’t Go Well:
Players were confused about the ducking mechanic, which lacked clear use within the current build. Additionally, people asked about music in the game, which made us ponder about sensational fun through music/sound effects. Feedback from our section leader involved how we could make the narrative more clear, pushing us to think about how could do this as we developed the tutorial which had not been implemented yet.
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
This round of playtesting pushed us to think about the value of our movement mechanics, we started thinking about cutting the duck mechanic due to time. At this stage, we began leveraging sound to foster a sensational type of fun. We added upbeat music and sound effects to collecting the Dino coin. Additionally, we continued developing our tutorial to embed the narrative.
Playtest 5
Who Playtested:
- A classmate from lecture
Learning Goals:
We aimed to evaluate how intuitive the shooting mechanics felt, and how sound, music, and feedback cues (like audio or animation) contributed to player satisfaction and overall game clarity.
Guiding Questions:
- What do you think about the sound?
- Is the game intuitive?
- Thoughts on game as a whole?
What Went Well:
The player enjoyed the shop system and actively engaged with the upgrading mechanics, showing interest in how their purchases affected gameplay. They also responded positively to the coin sound effects and found the act of collecting resources satisfying. The shooting mechanic was a highlight. They had fun using it and asked when they would be able to unlock better weapons. Additionally, the player reacted well to the game’s name and even mentioned they would play it during class, which pointed to strong interest and a high likelihood of replayability.
What Didn’t Go Well:
The player was confused about how to shoot and wasn’t sure which enemies or objects could be targeted, which led to some initial hesitation. After restarting, they didn’t realize they had lost their gun, which caused noticeable frustration and disrupted their experience. They also mentioned wanting clearer feedback after completing a level, such as a success sound to confirm their progress. After dying multiple times, the player gave up, which suggested that the early game may have felt too punishing or unbalanced. Additionally, they asked about features like armor, occupations, and special abilities, elements not present in the build, which may have created expectations the game didn’t yet meet.
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
This playtest revealed that audio was central to player satisfaction, affirming our direction in designing for sensational fun. We noted that positive sound cues enhanced perceived reward, while the absence (like after completing a level) created ambiguity. This made think about how we could reward our players. The tutorial remained under development, but this playtest highlighted how essential it would be for reinforcing mechanics, narrative tone, and guiding expectations. Additionally, we thought about how to scale the difficulty within the tutorial to hook our players so they could have a pleasurable introduction. We were finally able to push out the tutorial for the next playtest.
Playtest 6
Who Playtested:
- Two classmates during lecture.
Learning Goals:
Learning Goals:
We wanted to understand how well our current tutorial was teaching the game and how the game was cohesively.
Guiding Questions:
- What do you think of the onboarding experience?
- What do you think about the game overall?
What Went Well:
The players found the early levels to be a good entry point for new users. They were able to figure out the controls on their own, thanks to the small tutorial in the bottom right corner and the clear “press space to start running” prompt. They thought the shop system was fun and enjoyed getting to buy a gun, which made them feel more equipped to progress further. Sound effects, especially for coins and shooting, stood out as a highlight and added to their overall enjoyment. The players advanced through multiple levels and remained engaged even as the difficulty increased, and they specifically appreciated the notice that enemies were incoming, which helped them feel more prepared.
What Didn’t Go Well:
The players were disappointed that they didn’t get to keep their weapon after dying and restarting, which made the loss feel more punishing. They also asked if there were more types of power-ups available, suggesting that the current variety might feel limited and that expanding those options could improve long-term engagement.
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
From here, we wanted to keep improving the tutorial and, if time allowed, expand the variety of power-ups to increase engagement. Based on previous feedback about difficulty and lack of progression, we added new weapons like the pump shotgun and blood sword, which gave players more options and strategy. We also added a health point system to make the game feel less punishing, responding directly to earlier concerns about difficulty spikes. To give the game a stronger sense of purpose and reward, we added a leaderboard, which introduced a layer of friendly competition. Lastly, we increased the number of levels from 10 to 50 in order to better distribute the challenge and create a more satisfying difficulty curve. All these things were added to foster challenge, fantasy, and sensational types of fun. During this stage, we leveraged everything we had learned to push out a multiple new elements to Dieno Run.
Playtesters commenting how they enjoyed the shop
Adding New Weapons
Playtest 7
Who Playtested:
This was done by another classmate during a lecture.
Learning Goals:
We wanted to gauge thoughts surrounding our new elements, tutorial, and the game as a whole.
Guiding Questions:
- What do you think of the entire game?
- How are all mechanics working together?
- Was anything confusing?
What Went Well:
The player appeared very engaged throughout the session and was eager to improve after each run, showing strong replay interest. They found collecting coins satisfying and seemed motivated by the in-game rewards. After dying, they immediately wanted to try again, showing that the difficulty felt challenging but fair.
What Didn’t Go Well:
The player tried to interact with the inventory using the mouse before the game started, which revealed some confusion about whether that section was clickable or active. They also didn’t buy a weapon after the first level or two, which may have been due to a lack of understanding that this was possible.
Key Takeaways / Changes We Made:
From our Final playtest, our major takeaway was that our tutorial and narrative needed to be refined. Additionally, at this stage we started changing some pricing on our weapons to make the game beatable. All in all, we felt confident in our mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. Our learning goal, allowed us to confirm that Dieno Run was chaotic, challenging, but most of all fun. Everything seemed to work cohesively to make us proud of the game we created.
Final Playtest
Added cues on the Keys
Our new mechanics
Our leaderboard: Proof the game can be beat
Game Link
Demonstration of Experience (video of Final Playtest)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jTBdYs8KPRhRcXH7YkOHGClIOoWom48G/view?usp=sharing
Extra Credit
Future Expansions
In future expansions of the game, we plan to add more features, polish game mechanics, and improve visual fidelity. There were some concerns expressed over the jumping not being modular dependent on the press of the space bar and that repeated jumps lead our dino to slightly float off the floor, but nothing was game breaking or experience ruining. We also would like to update logic regarding hitboxes so that it is more applicable to the visual form of the character. The biggest edit request that we were planning on incorporating, but weren’t able to due to absence of time, is the end of levels after all obstacles have been spawned. Especially in later levels, after all obstacles have been passed, there is a long time frame of waiting until we reach the end of the level which is due to spawning logic that we weren’t able to adjust, but in the future with more time and effort we plan to correct this.
In regard to added features, the first one is the option for the dino to duck, similar to the Chrome game. We incorporated functionality of this, but it didn’t end up making the final cut due to time constraints of adding more obstacles that would have to make use of this mechanic, but the functionality and animation sprites for this mechanic exist. Beyond this, we want to add more items for the player to buy so that players can create vastly different gameplay experiences. Items such as armor that protect health, shoes that boost speed or increase jumping height, and new weapon types (boomerangs where projectiles come back, plasma gun where projectiles go through multiple enemies) to enhance the gameplay.
In order to release this game officially, although it is already deployed and playable, would require some of these fixes as well as further thought into level design. We would like to have the levels promote a higher variety of experiences, with different level ranges having various themes set in different time frames of the narrative to better immerse the player. Additionally, we would want to do more playtesting and modifications to make the difficulty progression feel gradual for any player type and ensure that the weapon purchasing progression is in line with how we’d imagine the average player to experience it. Despite these potential changes, our game has come a long way and it is most definitely playable and enjoyable as it is now.
Extended Narrative
As Dino ventured deeper into the rapidly evolving digital wilderness, the landscape twisted into chaos, filled with echoes of internet culture from across the ages. It began oddly familiar aside from the inverted colors of the world, with the same cacti and rocks as obstacles, but then came the massive dino skeleton’s of the future, followed by the elusive yet powerful Troll Face. Formidable opponents for our humble Dino, but Dino always keeps moving forward. The sky flickered with pixels and neon trails, humming with distorted snippets of viral tunes of the internet age. Each new region Dino traversed represented another era of the internet’s sprawling history, teeming with unexpected adversaries and obstacles forged from popular digital culture.
In one region, Dino found himself navigating through forests of meme-infested forums, with an evil backing track of laughter that echoed ominously among the trees made of crying and skull emoji’s. In another realm, Dino encountered endless swarms of pop-up ads, each attempting to trap our brave protagonist and ensnare him in a chaos of clickbait. Big red circles and arrows would attack Dino from land and air to inflict heavy damage and send him to a boring 20 minute YouTube video without anything from the thumbnail (the end of the game).
With every step, Dino had to adapt. He equipped himself with Minecraft armor to block intrusive ads, equipped a Fortnite pump shotgun to battle corrupt hyperlinks, and wore Subway Surfers high-jumping shoes to leap over the chasms of the dark web. Occasionally, iconic internet entities appeared, whether that be the pixelated rainbow trails of Nyan Cat or the eerie presence of Slenderman, challenging Dino’s agility and resilience as he continues into the future, hoping to make his way back to his peaceful past.
