Fly Close
Skim the rocks. Chain the close passes.
What it is
Rocks fall toward a ship that only moves left and right. Staying alive scores ten points a second, but the real points are in flying close: a rock that passes inside the ring drawn around the ship, and clears it, is a close pass.
A close pass is worth 50 points times the chain, and another within three seconds raises the chain, up to five. Touching a rock ends the run.
Fast, and still fair
Rocks speed up for the first forty seconds and then hold that speed, and more of them arrive over the first two minutes. Before each new rock appears, the game checks that a ship flying at 70% of top speed could still get past everything already falling, and holds the rock back if it couldn't. Every rock is on screen for at least a second before it can reach you.
A crash only counts when the drawn ship and rock actually overlap, and a press counts from the moment it happened, even on a screen that is slow to draw.
How to play
- Slide left or rightHold that half of the screen
- StopLet go
- Start a runTouch anywhere
Your first touch starts a run and steers it. The speaker button on the title and result screens turns the sound on or off.
On a desktop, hold the left or right arrow, or A or D. A mouse press on either half of the screen works like a touch. Space or Enter starts a run and never steers, and M turns the sound on or off.
It keeps your best
The best score is kept on your device, and nothing is uploaded. The sound is made by the game itself, with a note that climbs as the chain grows. With nobody playing, the game plays itself as a demonstration. Leaving the page pauses a run, and a run nobody is touching ends after thirty seconds.
A shared screen can open it in kiosk mode instead, which starts quiet, stores nothing, and shows today's best, clearing it at midnight.
What isn't settled yet
How hard the fastest stretch should be. The check before each rock assumes a ship that turns instantly, but the real one takes a moment to change direction, so a way past can still be a tight one.
Whether new players find close passes on their own. The game never explains them: the ring, the demonstration and the count on the result card are the only hints.
Build Log
-
Build 1
Before any rock appears, the game checks that a ship flying at 70% of top speed could still get past everything already falling, and holds the rock back if not. In ordinary play the check almost never has to act, so it was tested with three times as many rocks, where removing it let a ship flown along the planned routes crash. A safeguard that rarely fires has to be proven where it does.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine — it draws to a plain canvas. The typefaces it does use are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Cover art was rendered from the game’s own drawing code.
Fly Close is original work by Launchway Games.