Dino Merge

Dino Merge starts with a single speckled egg sitting in the sand and a giant flaming rock drifting down from the sky. Tap the egg until the shell splits, and a tiny green rex hops out. Tap a second egg, get a second rex, push one onto the other - and the pair fuses into a pink, bigger, louder dinosaur. That one move is the whole engine of the game, and it gets more interesting the further up the evolution chain you climb.

Hatch, Match, Evolve

Eggs come from the big blue button at the bottom of the screen. The first one is on the house; after that each egg costs coins, and the price creeps up a little every time you buy. A counter above the button shows how many eggs are on the field out of the maximum, so you cannot simply flood the valley - space is part of the puzzle.

A fresh egg needs a few taps before it hatches. Each tap adds a crack, the shell wobbles, and on the last tap the baby pops out and starts wandering around the sand. Two dinosaurs of the same species can be merged by dragging one on top of the other. The result is always the next species in the line, and every new species you create lights up its silhouette in the Discovered column on the right. There are ten in total, from the little green hatchling to the heavyweights at the bottom of the list that are still grey shadows when you start.

Why the asteroid matters

Above the river sit four round stone pens. They are not decoration. Dinosaurs you drop into a pen face the sky and fight the meteor coming down at the top of the playfield, and the stronger the dinosaur, the faster that rock gets chipped away. So the loop is: hatch cheap babies, merge them into something tough, park the tough ones in the pens, collect the coins they earn, buy more eggs. A red exclamation mark appears over an empty pen to remind you it is doing nothing.

Dino Merge Controls

• Click the egg button - buy an egg (price shown on the button)
• Click an egg repeatedly - crack it open and hatch the dinosaur inside
• Drag one dinosaur onto an identical one - merge them into the next species
• Drag a dinosaur into a stone pen - send it to attack the falling asteroid

Everything works with a single mouse button or a finger, which makes it a comfortable one-handed game on a laptop trackpad as well.

Strategy for Bigger Dinosaurs

Merge early, merge often

Leaving four identical babies walking around is wasted space and wasted coins. Pair them up as soon as they hatch. Two tier-two dinos become one tier-three, and so on - the field stays tidy and your pens get stronger fighters sooner.

Keep the pens full

Coins are earned by dinosaurs doing their job. An empty pen earns nothing, so whenever you merge a fighter that beats the one currently in a pen, swap them and move the weaker one back to the sand where it can be merged again.

Watch the egg price

The cost of eggs rises with every purchase. Early on it pays to buy freely, but once eggs get expensive, focus on merging what you already have instead of spending everything on new shells.

Power-ups are a shortcut, not a crutch

From time to time the game offers boosts - one of them, Ultra Hatch, makes the next three eggs arrive several tiers higher than normal. They are great for unlocking a new species in the Discovered list, but the steady merge-and-pen routine is what actually brings the meteor down.

What Makes It Satisfying

Merge games live or die on feedback, and this one gets it right. Eggs shake and crack in stages, babies bounce when they land, merged dinosaurs pop into place with a squash-and-stretch, and the coin counter in the corner ticks up while you plan the next move. The hand-drawn desert valley - a cave on the left, a smoking volcano on the right, ferns along the bottom - looks like a children's picture book, which makes the occasional asteroid all the funnier.

It is also a very relaxed game. Nothing punishes you for taking a break, and a session can be two minutes or twenty. That is a big part of why idle merge titles are so popular for short gaps in the day.

Questions Players Ask

How many dinosaurs can I discover?

Ten. The Discovered panel on the right shows all of them as silhouettes from the start, so you always know how far the chain goes.

Can I merge two different dinosaurs?

No - only identical species combine. Dragging a rex onto a different dinosaur just moves it.

What if I run out of coins?

Make sure every pen has a dinosaur in it. Pens are where the money comes from, and a few seconds of waiting is usually enough to afford the next egg.

More Merge and Dino Fun

If combining things is your favourite kind of puzzle, try Fruit Merge or the barnyard chaos of Chicken Merge. Want a dinosaur that runs instead of merges? The endless desert runner Dinosaur Game is a classic, and Dino Simulator lets you live as one in 3D.