How to play Paper Plane
Fly a paper plane as far as you can through a cave. Hold the button and the plane climbs; let go and it sinks. That is the whole game.
The ceiling and the floor wander up and down, rocks hang in the passage, and the further you fly the faster, narrower and twistier the cave gets. Touch anything and the flight is over.
Rules
- The score is the distance flown, in metres: ten pixels of cave are a metre, and the board is 48 metres wide.
- Holding climbs and letting go sinks, both at the same rate. The lift eases in and out over a few hundredths of a second, so a short tap is a nudge rather than a jolt.
- The cave starts wide and straight, and the first rock comes at about 100 metres. From there it speeds up, narrows and twists more with every metre until 3,000, then stays that hard.
- Every rock leaves an open passage at least 96 pixels tall above or below it (60 at full difficulty), eight times the plane’s height. Which side it is changes from rock to rock.
- Touching the ceiling, the floor or a rock ends the flight. A new cave is drawn for every flight. The Expert level is 400 metres and the Pro level 1,500.
Controls
- Space / ↑ / W / Enter
- Hold to climb, release to sink; also starts and resumes
- Mouse button / touch
- Hold anywhere on the board to climb, release to sink
- P / Esc
- Pause, once you are flying
Tips
- Fly in short, regular presses rather than long holds. Holding about half the time keeps the plane level.
- Look ahead, not at the plane. Choose your side of the next rock as soon as it appears on the right.
- Start levelling out before you need to: the plane keeps moving for almost half a second after you change your mind.
Paper Plane strategy
Half a hold is level flight
Lift is exactly twice gravity, so holding for half of any short stretch of time leaves the plane where it was. Pressing in a steady rhythm of short taps gives you a hover you can tilt up or down by holding a little longer or a little less. Long holds and long releases are for real changes of height, like diving under a rock.
Braking takes time
The plane climbs and sinks at up to 190 pixels a second, about three fifths of the board’s height. From full speed it needs almost half a second and 45 pixels, a seventh of the board, to stop. Most crashes against the ceiling come from holding too long on the way up, so let go before the plane reaches the height you want.
Picking a side
A rock first appears at the right-hand edge about 2.3 seconds before it reaches you at the start and 1.3 seconds at full speed. The passage on its open side is at least 96 pixels tall at first and 60 at full difficulty, against the plane’s 12. Commit to a side as soon as you see the rock and get there early, then hold that height through it rather than steering inside the gap.
How the cave builds
Speed, width, wander and the gap between rocks all change evenly with distance until 3,000 metres. At 400 metres, the Expert level, about 25 seconds in, the cave is still wide and slow. By 1,500 metres, the Pro level, after a minute and a half, it scrolls about 1.4 times as fast as at the start and its opening is about 180 pixels.
About Paper Plane
Flying through an endless cave without touching the walls is an old idea: SFCave, a game for Windows 3.1 from 1996, was built on it, and the idea has turned up in many one-button games since, best known on the web as the helicopter game.
Paper Plane is our own take, drawn in sumi ink and charcoal on paper: the rock is washed in three depths, darker the nearer it is, and the plane is the only red on the board.
Questions
How is the distance counted?
Ten pixels of cave are a metre, counted from the start of the flight. The cave is drawn at a fixed size and scaled to your screen, so a metre is the same on a phone and a monitor.
How do I play on a phone?
Touch and hold anywhere on the board to climb, lift your finger to sink. There is no pause button on touch screens, but switching to another tab or app pauses the flight.
Does it get harder?
Yes, steadily until 3,000 metres: the cave scrolls 1.8 times as fast, its opening shrinks from about three quarters of the board’s height to under two fifths, and rocks come about 27 metres apart instead of 62. After that nothing changes.
Is it the same cave every time?
No. Every flight gets a new cave and new rocks, so you can’t learn the route, only the plane.
