One button, one hop
Floppy Bird is a one-tap flying game. The bird is always falling, every tap gives it one upward flap, and a stream of pipes scrolls in from the right, each with a single gap. You score a point for each pipe you pass. There's no finish line.
The key to the game is one detail of how the flap works. A flap doesn't add to the bird's speed. It replaces it. However fast the bird is falling, a tap sets it moving upward at the same speed every time. So each single flap gives the same hop, starting from wherever the bird is when you tap. That makes the bird far more predictable than it feels at first. You aren't fighting momentum. You're choosing where each identical hop begins.
Fly low in the gap
Since a flap always lifts you by the same amount, the safest place to be is the lower half of a gap. From there, a flap carries you up through the middle. From near the top of a gap, the same flap can drive you into the upper pipe.
How big is a hop compared with a gap? It depends on the difficulty:
- Easy has wide gaps, and one hop climbs well under half of one.
- Medium has narrower gaps, and a hop is about half a gap.
- Hard has the narrowest gaps, and one hop climbs more than half of one.
On Hard, then, two quick taps inside a gap can easily carry you into the top pipe. One well-timed tap is the move.
Here's a typical pipe on Medium. The next gap sits a little lower than the bird. Let it fall without tapping, so it drifts into the lower half of the gap as it reaches the pipe. Tap once when it's about a third of the way up from the bottom of the gap. The hop lifts it through the middle while it crosses the pipe, and it starts falling again just as it comes out the other side. Then set up for the next gap the same way.
Changing height between pipes
Many crashes happen not inside a gap but between pipes, when the next gap is much higher or much lower than the last one.
- Climbing to a high gap. Start tapping as soon as you're clear of the previous pipe. A steady rhythm of single taps climbs smoothly. Don't save all the climbing for the last moment.
- Dropping to a low gap. Stop tapping early and let gravity do the work. The fall speeds up the longer it lasts, so begin your first rescue tap a little higher than feels natural.
- Using the ceiling. Flapping into the top edge doesn't end the run. The bird just stops rising. You can ride along the top for a moment if the next gap is high, but leave yourself time to drop.
Common mistakes
- Panic tapping. A burst of taps carries the bird a long way up and leaves you high in the gap. One tap per hop, with a pause to watch the result, beats several in a row.
- Watching the bird instead of the next gap. The bird's position is easy to feel. Look ahead to where the next gap is, and plan the descent or climb before you reach it.
- Hovering at the top. Riding the ceiling feels safe, but the next gap may be low, and a long fall from the top is the hardest one to stop in time.
Using the settings to practise
The difficulty buttons set gap size, pipe spacing, gravity, jump strength and pipe speed together, and each difficulty keeps its own best score. The settings sheet lets you change gravity, jump strength and pipe speed separately, with changes applied straight away. Gap size stays tied to the difficulty.
A good way to train is to start with the Floaty preset, which has low gravity, gentle hops and slow pipes, and learn the low-in-the-gap habit there. Move to Classic once you can pass twenty pipes or so. Then raise the pipe speed a step at a time. Frantic, with heavy gravity and a strong jump, is a good test once Hard feels comfortable. Pressing a difficulty button later resets the sliders to that level's values.
