Skybound: Hold to Fly

H&Row Studio

About this game

One finger. One rule: hold to climb, let go to dive.

Skybound is an endless arcade flyer about staying up there. Thread the bird flocks, slip past the storm clouds, scoop the coins, and set down gently on a runway to patch up and refuel. Every kilometre, something is waiting for you.

FLY WITH ONE THUMB
Hold anywhere on the screen to climb. Release to descend. That is the whole control scheme. Armed craft get one tap-to-fire button and an afterburner if they carry one — nothing else to memorise, nothing to fumble.

34 AIRCRAFT AND CHARACTERS
Start on a folded paper dart and work up through trainers, stunt biplanes, racers, helicopters, cargo haulers, airliners and jets. Then it gets strange:

• A fire-breathing dragon that costs exactly one coin
• A flying pig that hoovers up loose change
• A caped hero who fires lasers out of his eyes
• A ghost that cannot be killed and cannot keep a single coin
• A giant walking robot that jumps instead of flies, and dies to one bird
• A jellyfish helicopter that lobs wobbling balls of gel
• A sci-fi tier that leaves the atmosphere entirely

Every craft flies differently — glide, hover, afterburner, coin magnet, shield — and carries its own weapon: homing missiles, laser, cannon, bomb bay, flamethrower, wind cannon, dragon breath, bananas, or an entire family of ghosts.

A BOSS EVERY KILOMETRE
The world stops dead and a named tyrant blocks the sky. THE STORM KING fans three bolts at once. THE VOID MAW drags you into its line of fire. THE EMBER TYRANT works high-low pincers. Shoot it down, or, if you fly unarmed, simply out-dodge it until it gives up and leaves.

Down 100 birds in a single run and THE MEGA-PIGEON shows up carrying a picket sign. The union heard about it.

A WORLD TOUR, WITH A PASSPORT
The land under you changes as you fly: meadows, desert, pyramids, coastline, stone heads on a lonely island, alps, Antarctic icebergs, a great wall over green hills, a city skyline, pagodas and cherry blossom, canyon, savanna. Land somewhere new and it stamps your passport.

Fly a dragon and the entire world becomes an eternal twilight of castles and standing stones. Fly a spacecraft and the ground disappears altogether — open space, real constellations, no floor to hit.

PLANT A FLAG ON THE MOON
Skim the underside of the moon gently enough in a spacecraft and you plant your flag up there. One flag per pilot, ever — and it stays on the moon for the rest of the game.

THE DAILY SKY, AND YOUR OWN GHOST
The Daily Sky is one seeded run per day: the same sky for everyone, one attempt, no do-overs. In ordinary runs your best flight comes back as a translucent rival flying the exact line you flew, with a live gap readout. You against you.

THE SKY IS BUSY
• A UFO creeps up behind you and tractor-beams coins straight out of your purse. Dive to outrun it
• Land a banana on a runway and it stays there. You will forget about it. Physics will remind you
• Tuck into the slipstream behind a migrating V of birds for free speed, then thread your way back out
• A kaiju on the horizon might throw a boulder at you
• Balloon fiestas, a witch on a broom and other guests drift through the background

ALSO IN THE BOX
• Missions, rotating daily challenges and a 30-tier season track
• Pilot levels and ranks, from ROOKIE to SKYLORD
• A cinematic slow-motion replay of every crash, shareable as an animated GIF
• Mid-run upgrades, bought with the coins you picked up on that flight
• A continue after every crash, paid for with that run's coins — never your savings
• Landscape, one hand, built for short flights and long ones

No ads. No in-app purchases. No accounts and no sign-in. Skybound plays entirely offline — it does not even ask for internet permission, so nothing about your child ever leaves the device.

H&Row STUDIO

What’s new

Skybound takes off. Version 1.0.

• Hold-to-fly arcade flying, one thumb, landscape
• 34 aircraft and characters, from a paper dart to a walking robot
• A named boss every kilometre
• A world tour of 12 lands with a passport to stamp
• Daily Sky runs and ghost races against your own best flight
• Slow-motion crash replays you can share as a GIF

No ads, no purchases. Have a good flight.