This is an Action-Puzzle game where objects fall from the right to the left side of the screen, and you must eliminate them by matching two pairs of similar objects. There are birds, snakes, plants, and mushrooms as objects that can be matched, and as you remove them from the playing field, points will be awarded. You must try to keep the game going as long as possible and gain points to get the high score. The game will get increasingly faster as you go along, thus keeping the game continually challenging and fun to play.

There are four possible rows for these objects to randomly appear in at the right of the screen, and they will slowly drop to the left side and stop moving when another object is in the way. As the objects are dropping, the player can swap the current contents of the rows by using a dual-arrow flipper that is moved up and down between the four rows. The purpose of this functionality is to arrange the rows such that the rightmost object of a row is the same kind as the one falling above it. That way the two objects will match and be removed, thus gaining points and opening up space for other objects to fall into. Strategy must be used to match and remove the objects in order to keep the game going. If they cannot be removed fast enough, then the objects will stack up to the right side of the screen, and a gameover will occur if no more can fall. An added bonus to this game is that some eggshell objects will occasionally appear, and the player can allow for the other bird, snake, plant, and mushroom objects to be enclosed in two eggshell halves to gain more points. Although the instructions of the game sound complicated, playing it is rather simple and very entertaining.

The Up and Down arrow keys move the dual-arrow flipper up and down within the four rows of the playing area.

The 2nd key is used to swap the objects in the two rows that the flipper is currently pointing to.

LEFT KEY:

Pressing the Left key will cause for the objects to drop faster from the right to the left side of the screen. When you have the rows lined up as you want them, you can hold left to make the objects come down to speed up the gameplay. Releasing Left will resume the normal speed of the falling objects.

The Mode key will Pause the gameplay at any point, and display a message that says the game is paused. The Enter and 2nd keys will resume the gameplay.

The Clear key will exit the gameplay at any time and return the user to the title screen of Dino Puzzle. Quitting the game by this method will check if the current game has a high score and store that score if so.

The Delete key will quit PuzzPack to the TI-OS homescreen, and if the current game has a high score, then that score will be stored if so.

When a bottom eggshell half appears, you should position the rows so that the shell lands in the most empty row. That way, more objects will be able to stack up in the shell, and once you close the egg with a complementary top shell, the bonus points will be awarded for each object you enclosed. The bottom shell is one that opens to the right of the screen, and the top shell is one that opens to the left of the screen. If you have a top shell fall on its own without any bottom shell under it, then it will merely disappear from the gameplay. If you let a bottom shell drop and top shell drop right after it, with nothing in the middle, the eggshell pair will still disappear and points will be awarded, but not as much as if you had more objects enclosed. If a bottom shell drops onto another bottom shell, then both will be removed from gameplay unfortunately, so you must use strategy to not let this aspect happen, and position the bottom eggshells in other places.

As you remove objects and accumulate points, the level number will increase by one after a certain amount of progression in the game. This level number can be seen at the bottom of the screen in the middle, after the letters "Lv". The game initially starts at level 1, and as the levels get higher, the gameplay gets faster, making it more challenging to prevent a gameover. Whenever the rows of objects stack up to the right side of the screen, and the current object pairs are unable to fall past the black line, then a Gameover will occur. When this happens, your current score will be checked and stored if it is the high score, and you will be returned to the title screen to begin from level 1 again.