How to play
- Goal
- Fly the drake through every rune ring, in order, as fast as you can.
- How it ends
- A flight ends when you pass the gold finish ring; a missed ring pulls you back in front of it, so every finish has passed every ring.
- Record
- The fastest flight on each course; every finished flight counts.
- After the countdown the drake glides forward on its own; steer it through every rune ring, in order, to the gold finish ring. The next ring glows blue with a pillar of light through it, and an arrow by your height says whether it is above you or below.
- Diving gathers speed and climbing spends it: dive through a low ring and the speed carries you up to a high one, but a climb without speed ends in a stall, when the nose drops until the drake is fast again. Beat the wings for a push of speed: you have four beats, and one grows back every two seconds or so while the wings rest.
- Miss a ring by flying past outside it and it flares red: the ward holds you for half a second and sets you back on the course's centre line 30 metres before it, at its height, so the clock runs on while you steer to it again. Cloud walls line the sides and the cloud sea lies below; floating isles stand in some lines, warm updraft columns lift you without costing speed, and a second before a gust blows its streaks cross the sky and a chip names it.
Controls
| Stick (drag) · ← → · A D | Steer |
|---|---|
| Stick up / down · ↑ ↓ · W S | Climb and dive |
| Beat (held) · Space · Shift | Beat the wings; hold to keep beating |
| R | Restart the course |
| Escape | Pause (the flight then no longer counts for the Ten) |
The drake, its dragoon rider and the floating isles are warehouse 3D models drawn with three.js; the drake keeps its skeleton and every wing, leg, tail and neck bone is moved from the flight as it happens. The sparks, wind and runes are warehouse effect sprites packed into one sheet, and the fonts and sounds come from the Morass warehouse. A flight is sent as your controls alone, and the records worker flies it again with the same core before it ranks the time. Your progress and your best flight's ghost stay in this browser under morass.drake-flight.v1. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
Watch how to play
About Drake Flight
A ring course in full 3D among the floating isles, where each season the drake-wardens renew the ring-wards by flying them in order. You ride an armoured dragoon's drake: every ring is a hoop of wardstone with a veil of runes across it; fly through and the veil bursts into sparks, fly past outside and the ward holds you, then sets you back in front of the ring it is still waiting for.
There are sixteen fixed courses in four skies, each with its own light: wide morning rings over Dawnreach, grey rain and crosswinds in Stormwrack, dusk over the ember vents of Emberveil with updrafts and isles in the line, and the aurora over Moonhollow with smaller rings. Height is speed in the bank: dive to gather speed, climb on what you gained, and spend your four wing-beats when the line is wrong. Every course is the same every time, so a course can be learned.
The drake's wings are driven by the flight itself: a beat is one full stroke, a dive sweeps the wings back, a turn banks the body and lifts the inner wing, and a stall flares them. Your fastest flight on each course flies beside you as a pale ghost drake, with your time against it at every ring, and on this page the record's flight flies too, in gold. Each course keeps a Top 10 of the fastest flights, and the site flies the whole flight again before it keeps a place; gold, silver and bronze times are yours to chase on every course card.
