Kite Clash

Kite Clash is a free one-button kite fighting game you can play in your browser with no download. You stand on a flat rooftop in a painted festival city with a paper fighter kite on a long string, and rival flyers on the roofs across the street send their own kites up to meet yours. The goal of every sky is written at the top of the screen: cut a set number of rival kites, usually three to seven, before you run out of kites of your own.

The whole game is played with one button. Let go and your kite spins on the spot, slowly turning its nose round in a circle. Hold the screen, the mouse button or Space and the kite dashes in the direction its nose is pointing while your spool lets out more line. A dotted arrow from the nose shows where the dash would go: it turns gold when the dash would cross a rival string and red when it would run into the roofs or a power line. Flying is a rhythm of letting the kite spin until the arrow points where you want, then holding.

When two strings cross they hook together, and the fight is decided by the strings themselves. The string that keeps moving through the hook saws through the other one; the string that sits still is the one that wears out and snaps. So once you are hooked, keep holding so your line keeps sliding. A red stretch on a string shows where it is wearing thin, and a ring around each kite fills up as it gets close to breaking. A cut kite tumbles down over the city, and if your string touches it before it reaches the roofs you catch it for coins and a new entry in your kite album.

You start each sky with three kites. A snapped string costs one. In the first two skies a crash into the roofs or a power line only sends you back to your roof to launch again; from the third sky every crash frays your string, a row of three knots next to your kites turns red, and the third crash frays it through and costs a kite. Every rival you cut mends your string, and so do twenty seconds without a crash. Each sky gives up to three stars: one for clearing it, one for never losing a string with two crashes or fewer and one for catching one or two of the kites you cut. Coins from cuts, catches, stars and sky lanterns buy upgrades in the Workshop: Sharp manja makes your string cut faster, Tough string makes it wear more slowly, and Spare kite gives you an extra kite in every sky.

There are 36 skies in six fictional cities, and each city adds something new for the same simple controls. Saffron Roofs teaches the basics. Breezeport brings sudden gusts, announced by arrows at the edge of the screen, and diving kites that strike from above. Wire Market has power lines to fly around, flocks of pigeons and two rivals in the air at once. Glass Bazaar has glass-coated strings that cut harder and kids with bamboo poles who grab falling kites before you can. Lantern Night is played in the dark among glowing lantern kites and floating sky lanterns, and the Monsoon Cup ends the festival in a storm where the wind turns round mid-fight. The last sky of every city is a duel with its champion, from the Saffron Hawk to the Storm King. Beat a champion to open the next city on the map, or keep flying and the map opens it for you after a while.