Copter

Small taps, not big ones

Copter lives or dies on the size of your inputs. Hold the button and the little craft climbs; let go and it sinks, and both happen with a bit of momentum, so the machine keeps rising for a moment after you release and keeps falling for a moment after you press. That lag is what catches people out. The fix is a light touch: quick, frequent taps that keep you hovering roughly in the middle of the tunnel, rather than long presses that slam you into the ceiling followed by a panicked drop into the floor. A good benchmark: if the craft's path looks like gentle waves, your inputs are right. If it looks like sawteeth, they're too big. Watch your first three seconds and you'll know which pilot you are today.

Reading the cave

The tunnel scrolls past at a constant speed and the gap keeps shifting up and down, sometimes narrowing or throwing a block into the middle. Look ahead to where the gap is going, not at where your craft is right now. By the time you react to the wall beside you, it is already too late. It helps to accept what the button really controls: you don't steer to a spot, you nudge a drifting machine that answers slowly, so every plan has to start half a second before the craft needs to be somewhere. Try to sit a hair above the center line, because it is easier to dab the button and rise into a gap than to conjure sudden downward speed when the floor drops away.

• Keep a steady rhythm of taps; a constant light flutter is easier to control than stop-start bursts.
• Watch the gap two or three craft-lengths ahead and steer for that, not the wall next to you.
• When the tunnel tightens, slow your inputs down and make them smaller, not bigger.

Getting past the blocks

Blocks are where most runs end, and nearly every block death is the same death: deciding late. Say a block sits ahead, slightly above the middle of the tunnel, so the bigger gap is underneath. The right move starts two seconds early. Release, let the craft settle lower, then feather quick taps so you level off and glide under. The wrong move is holding your height until the block fills the screen, then dumping the button. Now you're falling with momentum you can't cancel, and the floor gets you even though the block didn't. When blocks come in pairs, one high then one low, fly the S-curve early: pass the first block close on its safe side so you're already lined up for the second. Skimming close to a block you've planned for is safe. A block you haven't planned for is what kills you.

The high-score choke

Most crashes cluster right after a personal best, and it isn't the cave's fault. The counter ticks past your record, your grip tightens, and taps that were feather-light all run turn into stabs. The craft starts lurching between climb and fall, each correction bigger than the last, and three seconds later it's over. The fix is boring: keep the same tap rhythm you had at zero, treat the score as invisible, and fly the tunnel in front of you. It also helps to play in short sets. Fine control fades fast, so ten focused runs beat forty tired ones, and if you notice your inputs growing, that's the signal to rest, not to push.

The original one-button flyer

Copter follows the Helicopter Game, a tiny browser hit that spread through office computers and school labs in the early 2000s, long before phones had app stores. Its whole design is a single control doing two jobs: press to go up, release to go down. That idea turned out to be one of the most copied in games. Flappy Bird, the 2013 phone sensation by Dong Nguyen, runs on the same single input and the same short, repeatable runs. When browsers retired Flash at the end of 2020 the original versions went dark, and remakes like this one carry the design on. There is no finish line. The tunnel simply goes on, gets meaner, and the distance you cover before one touch ends the run is the only score that matters.