Dinosaur World is a 3D exploration-based freeware Edutainment Game (and something of an beta; the only playable version is effectively a demo) from The BBC, inspired by the second episode of their classic TV Documentary, Walking with Dinosaurs and its spin-off The Ballad of Big Al (with the species and fate of one of the game's predatory dinosaurs mirroring that of the latter series' titular character).
The objective of the game is to explore various Jurassic environments (a mossy floodplain, a desert, a dried-up riverbed, a redwood forest and a crater formed by an extinct volcano), find all animals, plants and geographical features described in your inventory, and take note of the events that happen via a limited supply of "TV cameras" you can freely place all around the map, as well as onto the dinosaurs themselves. Once the player has found every item of note, a Bonus Stage (set in a salt plain) opens, where you have the opportunity to create your own dinosaurs and watch them interact.
The game plays like a semi-interactive nature documentary, with a narrator describing things as you approach them in detail. Many familiar scenes from the original TV show are recreated, but it also offers a number of new events to explore.
The game provides examples of:
- 100% Completion: To access the bonus area, you have to find every item that's on the inventory screen, but you don't have to keep track of all the event updates in the game.
- A God Is You: The player, initially an invisible observer of the game's environments, is granted the ability to spontaneously create herds of dinosaurs within the Bonus Stage, effectively positioning them as a godlike entity (albeit solely within the confines of the salt plain).
- Beating A Dead Player: Sort of, but it happens among the dinosaurs due to a glitch. Allosaurus, when spawned in the Bonus Stage, will keep attacking even dead Diplodocus, which results in the carnivores jumping up "onto" the air, clawing and biting it.
- Bonus Stage: The salt plain.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The forest is quite unsettling with its giant trees, mist, and ominous accompanying music, and the only dinosaur there (aside from a mother Allosaurus that shows up as a scripted event later on) is the disembodied voice of an Ornitholestes.
- First-Person Ghost: The player, for all intents and purposes doesn't actually exist, as nothing reacts to you.
- Game Over: Only when you quit the game manually.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: You can't walk from the path into the forest, even though there is nothing blocking your way, and there is a solid wall just a few feet into the forest anyway. Why not stop the player there and let you stroll around the trees? Probably to prevent you from walking up the fallen log and have fun.
- Correction — it's possible to climb that tree, but it involves a little cheating. Wait until the mother Allosaurus appears near her nest, then tag her using 'T'. By shaking your mouse like crazy, you'll clip out of the map, and thus it becomes possible to walk around the map, outside of it. Walk to the outermost edge of the nearby cave-entrance, to the spot where the rock meets the forest shrubbery. You'll be able to walk back into the map again, into the forest and even up the fallen tree. Obviously, the intent was to let you up there in the first place, but they never finished the game completely (evidenced by the fact that you can clip through the other trees freely), and so sealed the whole place off with that invisible wall.
- Mama Bear: Averted with the Allosaurus. When an Ornitholestes robs its nest, it gets real angry, and… continues to stand in a single spot, roaring at nothing in particular.
- Minimalist Cast: Potentially owing to its unfinished status, the biodiversity of the game's environments is conspicuously sparse: only three species of dinosaur (Diplodocus, Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, with only one living example of the latter species featuring), two pterosaurs of an unspecified species, two dragonflies and a swarm of flies are depicted alive, enabling the player to complete the in-game field guide (and thus unlock the Bonus Stage) relatively rapidly.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Rhamphorhynchus in North America, instead of Europe. In the game's defense, it doesn't specify the genus.
- Narrator
- Offscreen Teleportation: You've explored every region there is, and only found two Allosaurus and a single Stegosaurus in the whole game. What's that? Another Allosaurus just appeared in the forest while you weren't looking? And yet another Allosaurus near the riverbed? And there's suddenly a Stegosaurus stuck in the mud? And also an Allosaurus? Bear in mind, apart from the forest, everything is visibly sealed off by rock walls.
- Prehistoric Monster: Averted. The game tries to showcase a realistic depiction of these animals - at least as far as their behavior goes - without taking its numerous glitches into consideration.
- Shout-Out: The main Allosaurus visible in the desert region suffers ailments (and an eventual cause of death) reminiscent of the eponymous Allosaurus from the Walking With special The Ballad of Big Al; given the approximate date, species and locations (including, most conspicuously, a salt lake) the game shares with the special these similarities are presumably deliberate allusions.
- Stock Sound Effect: The animal sounds have been copied from Walking with Dinosaurs, though unfortunately, Ben Bartlett's music tracks are absent.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Allosaurus will repetitively attack Diplodocus until they bring them down or die trying.
- The Voice: Ornitholestes in the game is represented by the sound it makes. The animal itself never appears, no matter how hard you look into the forest. This is purely for convenience's sake, so that the developers didn't have to design and animate it.
