Tap and hold to lift, release to fall. Fly through the gaps between obstacles and go as far as you can.
Your helicopter stays at a fixed spot about a fifth of the way in from the left edge of the playfield while columns, each with a single gap, scroll in from the right. Nothing moves until your first touch, and the first column starts half a screen width beyond the right edge, so you get about two seconds to settle before the first gap arrives.
Press and hold anywhere on the playfield to lift (continuous thrust); release to let gravity pull the helicopter down. You control altitude by how long you hold, not by how often you tap. Lift is stronger than gravity, but the top climbing speed is lower than the top falling speed, and the helicopter keeps drifting the same way for a moment after you switch between holding and releasing. A hold counts until you lift your finger, even if it slides off the playfield.
Touching a column, the ceiling or the floor ends the run. Each gap is placed at a random height, anywhere from near the top to near the bottom, and the columns are usually about two-thirds of the playfield width apart, never closer than about 60%.
Difficulty rises with distance. The course starts scrolling at 180 pixels per second and gains 50 pixels per second for every 100 points, so it is twice as fast by 360 points and almost four times as fast by 1,000. Meanwhile the gaps narrow from 42% of the playfield height to 22%, which they reach at 1,000 points; after that only the speed keeps rising.
Score is distance: one point for every 10 pixels the course scrolls, shown live at the top. Your best is saved on this device, and after a crash you can save any score above zero to the Hall of Fame. Pressing New during a flight ends it and records the distance; press it again to start a new flight.
Goal: fly as far as possible.
The whole game lives in your finger pressure: holding gives continuous lift and releasing lets gravity pull you down, so smooth, fractional taps keep you level far better than long holds that rocket you into the ceiling. Think of it as feathering altitude with quick on-off pulses rather than yanking the helicopter up and down.
Aim for the centre of each gap, not its edges, because both the ceiling and floor are instant death and the middle gives you room to absorb a misjudged tap. Read the next gap while you are still passing through the current one, since the helicopter's momentum means you must begin adjusting your height a beat early. As the scroll speeds up, resist the panic-hold — keep your inputs light and rhythmic, and let the gaps come to you rather than diving for them.
The numbers behind the controls explain the feel. Holding pushes you up harder than gravity pulls you down, so a level hover needs your finger down only about two-fifths of the time: short presses with slightly longer pauses between them. Momentum is the trap. Let go after a full-speed climb and the helicopter keeps rising for almost half a second; pulling out of a full-speed dive takes about 0.4 seconds of holding and covers roughly the height of a late-game gap on a typical phone. Start levelling off before you reach the height you want, in both directions, and avoid long free falls that you will have to brake.
Do your climbing and diving in the open space between columns, not inside them. At the start the helicopter needs about a third of a second to pass through a column, and any drift during that time can clip an edge, so arrive level and close to the middle of the gap. The moment you clear a gap, look for the next one: sitting that far to the left, you can see most of the course ahead, and because every gap's height is random, the next one can be far above or below the last. Runs are short by design, since speed grows with distance: 500 points takes only about 17 seconds of flight and 1,000 about 27. The skill that decides a run is planning the route two gaps ahead at high speed, not endurance.