A weaver bird crosses a reed bed. Tap and it beats its wings. Do nothing and it falls. The reeds have gaps, and you fly through them. That is the whole game, and you play it alone.
Tap anywhere on the board and the bird beats its wings once. The whole board is the button. On a keyboard, press Space, the Up arrow or W. The flap happens the moment your finger goes down, not when it lifts.
A flap always lifts the bird by the same amount, and then it starts to fall again. You steer by choosing when to tap, not how hard. The bird does not move forward or back. The reeds come to it.
Each reed has one gap. Go through it. Touch the reed above or below the gap and the run is over. The first gap is always near the height you start at.
The top of the screen stops the bird but does not hurt it. The water at the bottom ends the run.
Ten points for every reed you get past. Five more for threading it, which means the bird was in the middle half of the gap as it cleared the reed, not scraping an edge. Over a long flight, threading is most of the difference between two scores.
With every reed the bed moves a little faster. The gaps narrow, the reeds come closer together, and each gap is allowed to sit further from the one before. That last part is what ends every flight: sooner or later the next gap is further away than the bird can climb or drop in time. Nobody flies forever. A flight that somehow lasts about six minutes is stopped there.
The bird sits in the reed bed and nothing moves until you press Start. Then it starts to fall. You tap once and it rises. The first reed arrives with its gap close to where you already are. You tap twice more and pass through the middle of it: 10 points, and 5 for the thread.
The next gap is lower. You stop tapping and let the bird drop, then tap once to catch it. You clear the reed but close to the bottom edge of the gap: 10 points, no thread.
It goes on like that, a little faster each time. At the twenty-first reed the gap is high and you are low. You tap three times and it is not enough. Into the reeds.
The card says 20 reeds, 12 threaded. That is 200 for the reeds and 60 for the threads: 260. If it beats your best, it says so.
Weaver is one of our own games, and you will know its shape on sight: one button, a row of gaps, and gravity. The bird in it is a male village weaver. It has a bright yellow body, a black face and a short thick bill, and it is the bird that builds woven nests among reeds like these.
Two things are easy to miss. The middle of a gap pays more than its edges. And the reed bed has an end, so a good score comes from flying well, not from flying for a long time.
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one of the games in the Arcade.