Dinosaur Game Night Mode
Night mode is the dinosaur game's inverted colour scheme — dark sky, moon and stars — which switches on at every multiple of 700 points and lasts 12 seconds. The game above starts in night mode and stays there, so you can practise the flip that ends most runs.
Updated
Space to start · ↑ jump · ↓ duck · tap on mobile
What night mode is
At every multiple of 700 points the dinosaur game inverts its colours for 12 seconds: the pale desert becomes a dark one, the gray T-Rex becomes light, a crescent moon and a scatter of stars drift across the sky, and then everything fades back. Nothing about the gameplay changes. The obstacles are in the same places, the speed is the same, the hitboxes are the same. It is entirely a test of whether your eyes can keep reading the screen while it flips.
That is also why it is where most runs end. The first night arrives just as the pterodactyls have started and the speed is climbing past 9; a player who has been tracking dark shapes on a light background suddenly has to track light shapes on a dark one, and the reflex jump that follows lands on a cactus. Survive the first flip and the second one, at 1,400, is noticeably easier.
How to practise it
Chrome only shows night mode in 12-second bursts, and only once you have already reached 700. The game on this page starts in the inverted palette and stays there for the whole run, so you can spend a full session learning to read the dark screen — the cactus silhouettes, the pale pterodactyl at each of its three heights — without earning your way there first. When it feels normal, go back to the regular dinosaur game and the flip will feel like a change of wallpaper rather than a wall.
- Watch the right edge of the screen; the obstacles are lighter than the ground, not darker.
- Pterodactyls are the hardest to read at night — decide on jump or duck as soon as one appears.
- Do not jump at the moment of the flip. Nothing new has arrived; only the colours changed.
The moon, the stars, and the design behind it
Night mode was added after launch to give long runs something to look at. The moon advances one phase each time night triggers, so a very long run sees it wax and wane; the stars are placed randomly each cycle. None of it affects the score, and the 12-second duration and 700-point interval are fixed in the game's code — the same constants this page's copy of the runner uses. More on how the runner was built is on the history page.
Frequently asked questions
When does night mode start in the dinosaur game?
At 700 points, and again at every multiple of 700. Each night lasts about 12 seconds before the colours fade back to day.
Does anything change in night mode besides the colours?
No. The speed, obstacle spacing and hitboxes are identical. The screen inverts — dark background, light T-Rex and cacti — and a moon and stars appear. The difficulty is purely visual.
Is there a permanent dark mode for the dinosaur game?
Not in Chrome itself, where night lasts 12 seconds at a time. The game on this page starts inverted and stays inverted for the whole run, which is how you practise it.
Why does the moon change shape?
The moon steps through eight phases, advancing one phase each time night mode triggers — a small detail the designers added so long runs have something to notice.
