Games like Flappy Bird, with spikes and hoops
Love one-tap flying games? Here is what makes them work, how a few well-known ones play, and what Flappy Spikes, a free one-tap game for Android, adds to the idea.
What makes a one-tap flying game
A one-tap flying game has one control: tap and your character jumps or flaps, let go and gravity pulls it down. The whole skill is timing. Runs are short, a mistake ends them, and "one more go" is always a tap away. The best games in the genre are easy to learn, hard to master and fair: when you crash, you know it was your tap.
Flappy Spikes has been one of them since 2014: tap to fly, thread the bird through the hoops and stay clear of the spikes on the top and the bottom of the screen. The how to play guide covers the details.
If you like Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird, released in 2013, is the game that made one-tap flying famous: you guide a small bird through gaps between pipes.
Flappy Spikes started the same way, with pipes, in 2014. Today the pipes are hoops: you fly through rings instead of between pipes, a rim touch bounces you off instead of ending the run, and clean passes build a perfect streak that sets your bird on fire. The bird still flaps with one tap, and the spike strips on the top and the bottom are still deadly.
If you like Don't Touch the Spikes
Don't Touch the Spikes, by Ketchapp, has you bounce a bird between two walls while spikes appear along the sides.
Flappy Spikes keeps the spikes but sends you forward instead of side to side: the screen scrolls, the spike strips run along the top and the bottom, and the hoops come at you one after another. The colours change every 10 hoops, and the game gets faster the further you fly.
If you like Flappy Dunk
Flappy Dunk, by Voodoo, has you flap a winged basketball through hoops, with bonus points for clean shots.
In Flappy Spikes you thread a bird through hoops too, and a pass without touching the rim is a perfect. Perfects in a row score more and more points, and the third one lights the fire. On top of the hoops there are special rings: springs, switches, saws, ring trains and portals to rides.
If you like Flappy Dragon
Flappy Dragon puts the one-tap flying idea in a fantasy setting, with a small dragon flapping past obstacles.
Flappy Spikes has its own flock instead of one hero: 30 birds to unlock, from a rubber duck to a phoenix, plus hats, gear, hoops and trails. See them all on the birds and skins page.
What Flappy Spikes adds
- Versus races. Race a real player's recorded run and watch their score climb next to yours; or switch to Free Fly. How Versus works.
- Rides. Portals launch you into a cannon shot, a space trip, a volcano eruption, a deep sea dive, a pinball machine or a storm.
- Power-ups. Shields, hearts for an extra life, the comet and capsules that slow the world down or shrink your bird.
- Unlockables. 30 birds plus hats, gear, hoops and trails, bought with the coins you earn in runs.
- Ranks. Ten ranks from Egg to Legend, set by your best score, and a Google Play Games leaderboard.
Flappy Spikes is free on Google Play and coming to iPhone. It is the original game from 2014, rebuilt in 2026: read the story.
Ready to fly?
Free to play on Android. Coming to iPhone.