How Wingsy plays

Flying: flap, glide and dive

Each bird's flight comes from its real wingspan, weight and wing area. Lift and drag are calculated many times a second, so long-winged birds glide far and small birds turn on a coin.

Hold Space to flap and gain speed or height. Let go to glide, which costs nothing. Hold Shift to tuck your wings into a dive and pick up speed fast, then let go to pull out. The air brake (Ctrl, X or right mouse) flares your wings to slow down.

If you pull up too hard while flying slowly, the wing stalls and you start to drop. Push the nose down to build speed and the wing recovers.

Stamina

The stamina bar drains while you flap or hover and refills slowly while you glide. It refills faster in rising air, while perched or resting, and when you eat. When it runs out you cannot flap until you recover, so glide, find a thermal or land.

Press Z to roost or rest. Swallows that roost under a shed eave at dusk wake up with full stamina. The Endurance Conditioning skill makes the stamina pool 50% larger.

Thermals

Thermals are columns of warm rising air. By day they form over hot tin shed roofs, solar panels and plowed fields. Fly into one, stop flapping and circle inside it to climb without spending stamina. While you are in one, the altimeter shows THERMAL with a green climb bar.

Thermals show as golden particle columns and on the map, and flapping inside one costs no stamina. The Thermal Resonance skill makes them lift you faster and shows them from twice as far.

Perching and landing

Slow down near a power line, branch, roof ridge, fence rail, pole top or shed eave and press F to perch. You cannot land at full speed, so brake first. Press F or Space again to take off.

Some birds have special perches: woodpeckers grip tree trunks, mynas hang upside down from banana bracts, prinias sit inside shrubs, and walking birds can land on the ground and move around on foot.

Food, markers and the autopilot

Every bird has its own diet, from midges and aphids to frogs, pecans and lizards. Eating gives stamina and XP. Green markers on screen point to nearby food your bird can eat, and quest markers point to objectives.

Eating and the autopilot come with R, which each bird unlocks at level 2 (fly, perch and dive to get there). Then fly toward a food marker and press R: the autopilot flies you there, lands and eats. It is a good way to learn what each bird eats. You can turn the markers off in the pause menu.

Casual mode

Casual mode is on by default for new players. Your wings flap on their own when you slow down or climb, the wing never stalls, bumps are soft, flapping costs much less stamina and perching is more forgiving. Turn it off in the pause menu for full flight physics.

Each bird also has a short hands-on tutorial covering take-off, landing, eating, its signature ability and diving. You can restart it from the pause menu.

Ancestral nests and switching birds

Every species has an ancestral nest somewhere in the village, marked by a golden pillar of light. Perch in one to discover it. At a nest, or on the central telephone wires above Swallow Ave, press Tab to switch to another bird.

• Barn Swallow: mud cup under Shed A eaves
• Common Kingfisher: burrow in the Meadow Pond bank
• Common Myna: wall cavity by the banana grove
• Syrian Woodpecker: cavity in the Great Pecan
• Eurasian Hoopoe: hollow in an ancient olive
• Graceful Prinia: woven pouch in fleabane
• Eurasian Jay: twig nest in the pecan forest
• Rose-ringed Parakeet: cavity in a Persian lilac
• Hooded Crow: stick nest atop a concrete pole
• White-spectacled Bulbul: cup nest in the mulberry
• Common Blackbird: cup in the rose hedge
• Eurasian Stone-curlew: scrape in the plowed field

Day and night

The village runs on a full day: dawn, morning, midday, afternoon, golden hour, dusk and night. One game hour passes every real minute. The time of day changes what is around: thermals are strongest by day, fly swarms rise at dusk, and the stone-curlew hunts at night with night vision (N). You can jump to another time of day from the pause menu.

Quests

There are two kinds of quests. Story quests start at golden markers on the map (M), and each one needs a particular bird. Press G at the marker to begin.

Instinct quests are generated for whichever bird you are flying, so there is always something to do. Open the journal (J) to see your current one or roll a new one.

• Forage: Eat a few of your bird's favourite food (15 midges for insect catchers).
• Ride the Heat: Gain height inside a thermal without flapping.
• Stoop: Reach a target speed in a tuck dive.
• Wander: Fly to a named landmark such as the Great Pecan or the Red Barn.
• Survey: Perch on four different power lines, roof ridges, branches or fence rails.
• Species instinct: One task only your current bird can do, like caching a pecan or cracking a nut.

XP, levels and skills

Each bird levels up on its own, up to level 20, by flying, perching, diving, riding thermals, eating and finishing quests. R unlocks at level 2 and T at level 3. Every bird starts with one skill point and earns another at each new level. Open the skill tree with K.

Controls

Wingsy plays with a mouse and keyboard, a gamepad, or touch controls on phones and tablets.