How to play
Two biplanes take off over a patchwork of farm fields on a golden evening. Ember flies the orange plane from the left, Indigo the blue plane from the right. Each plane can take three hits. Shoot your rival down to win the round, and win five rounds to win the match. You can also pick three or seven on the menu.
- Ember turns with A and D, opens the throttle with W, slows down with S and fires with Space.
- Indigo turns with the arrow keys left and right, opens the throttle with up, slows down with down and fires with Enter.
- Gamepads work too: the stick steers and throttles, and A fires. The first pad is Ember, the second is Indigo.
- On a phone, hold it sideways. Each pilot owns one half of the screen: drag to steer and hold the star button on the outer edge to fire.
- Playing alone? Choose vs Bot and pick Easy, Normal or Hard.
- P or Esc pauses. The game also pauses by itself when you switch tabs.
A plane never stops. It cruises when you leave the throttle alone, speeds up when you push it and slows down when you pull it back. The sky wraps around: fly off the right edge and you come back on the left.
Speed and turning
Slow planes turn tighter. Pull the throttle back and your nose swings round more than twice as fast as at full speed. That is how you get behind a rival who is flying flat out. The price is that a slow plane is easy to follow, so open the throttle again once you are on their tail.
Hot guns
Your machine gun heats up with every shot. The bar in your corner shows the heat. It cools slowly while you keep the trigger down and three times faster when you let go. If the bar fills up, the gun jams for about a second and a half and you cannot shoot at all. Short bursts keep you firing; one long burst leaves you helpless.
Clouds
Four clouds drift across the map with the wind. A plane inside a cloud is hard to see and bullets that fly into a cloud fizzle out, so a cloud is a safe place to hide for a moment. Your own guns are too wet to fire in there, though, and the wind keeps pushing the cloud along. The bot cannot see you inside a cloud either. It heads for the last place it saw you.
Power-up balloons
With power-ups on, a balloon floats up over the fields every few seconds. Fly through it to grab it:
- Twin guns fire two bullets at once for about nine seconds.
- Shield soaks up the next hit.
- Afterburner makes you much faster for about seven seconds.
- Repair gives back one heart and cools your gun.
Planes that crash into each other bounce apart and lose speed, but nobody takes damage. If both planes go down at almost the same moment, the round does not count. A round that drags on for about a minute ends without a winner.
Strategy
Fight for the tail. A rival in front of you cannot shoot back. When they get behind you, cut the throttle and turn hard to the side they are not on.
Lead your shots. Bullets take time to arrive, so aim a little ahead of a crossing plane.
Tap, do not hold. Watch the heat bar and stop before it turns red. A jammed gun at close range loses rounds.
Use the clouds to break away, then come out shooting before the wind carries the cloud away from you.
Enjoy two-player duels on one screen? Bounce Tanks swaps the sky for a sandpit maze with ricocheting shells, and Sumo Bump is a ring-out pushing match for two.
If you enjoy Sky Duel, try Snake or Snowball Siege next.
