🐦 How to Play Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird is a one-button infinite-runner. Your bird falls continuously due to gravity — click, tap, or press Space to flap the wings and gain altitude. Your only goal is to fly through the gaps between the green pipes without touching them or the ceiling and floor. Each pipe pair you pass earns 1 point. Use the Pause button (or Escape key) to pause mid-game.
The difficulty level controls two variables: the pipe gap width (200 px on Easy, 150 px on Medium, 100 px on Hard) and pipe speed (1.5, 2.0, or 2.8 pixels per frame). On Hard mode the gap is narrower than the bird’s body height, demanding pixel-perfect timing. Pipes are generated at random heights but always leave a playable gap.
Tips & Strategies
- Find a rhythm — flap in short, controlled bursts rather than holding or hammering.
- Aim to fly through the middle third of each pipe gap for the most margin.
- Watch the next pipe as soon as you clear the current one.
- On Easy, let the bird drop lower before flapping to develop consistent timing.
- Stay calm after a near-miss — panic-flapping is the top cause of deaths.
History & Background
Flappy Bird was created by Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen and released in 2013. At its peak it generated —50,000 per day in ad revenue. Nguyen removed it from app stores in 2014, calling the attention “too addictive”. The gameplay concept — simple controls, brutal difficulty — has since been cloned thousands of times and remains a benchmark of casual game design.