just flap bro
free webcam flying game · browser
what is just flap bro?
Just Flap Bro is a free 3D flying game you play in your browser — and, if you want, with your own body. You are a small prey bird over an endless forest. A hawk has decided you are lunch and is already behind you. Gravity is working the entire time, so staying in the air is not automatic: you have to flap, and the way you flap is by flapping your actual arms in front of your webcam, like wings.
Lean your upper body left or right and the bird banks and turns with you. Cross both arms down to your sides and it folds its wings into a dive, trading height for a burst of speed — which is exactly how you get out from under a swooping hawk. There is nothing to download and nothing to install, and if you have no webcam, or would rather not use one, the keyboard and touch controls play the whole game.
That is escape mode, and it is one of two. Hunt puts you on the other side of the chase: the same forest and the same controls, except you fly the hawk and the little birds are the ones running. Nothing is behind you — the pressure is a hunger meter that only a catch refills. The two modes keep separate best scores.
how to play
The goal is distance. Every flap gives you a burst of lift and a little speed, and then gravity starts taking it back — so the whole game settles into a rhythm: flap, glide, flap again. Find the slowest rhythm that holds your altitude and you can fly for a very long time.
Flapping costs stamina, shown as the bar along the bottom. It refills while you glide. Panic-flapping empties it and your wings go weak, which is usually the moment the forest arrives. The hawk gets faster the longer you survive, and when it closes in it screeches and lines up a swoop. That screech is your cue: bank hard or dive and it overshoots you.
The forest is not scenery. Clipping a trunk or a canopy ends the run, and so does touching the ground. Your distance in metres is your score, and your best is saved on your own device.
how to play — hunt mode
In hunt mode you fly a bigger, heavier, faster bird. It glides further and dives like a brick, but it does not turn like a sparrow. Chasing a bird in level flight barely closes the gap: the only thing that catches anything is a stoop — get above it, tuck your wings, and fall on it.
The birds are not oblivious. They watch where they are going, so one you approach from behind notices you late, and they hear your wings — a flapping hawk is spotted from half again as far as a gliding one. So the hunt has a shape to it: climb early while you are still well out of range, then stop flapping, glide in, and drop. A bird that has seen you bolts for the treetops, where it can fly through the canopy and you cannot, and it jinks, so a stoop that committed too early sails straight past. It can only sprint for a second or two though, so a first pass that misses is worth following up — if you have kept the height and the hunger to try again.
The hunger meter under your score is the clock. It empties in about half a minute, a catch buys back roughly twelve seconds, and the drain gets faster with every bird you take, so the runs that go long are the ones where you never stop hunting. Trees, ground and mountains kill you exactly as they do in escape mode — and now you are the one flying at them at full speed with your eyes on something else.
The forest is not flat. Mountains rise out of the fog ahead of you — bare rock well above the treeline, tall enough to end a run, and scattered at random across the map, so no two runs put them in the same place. Some are lone peaks you can simply steer around; others are long ranges you have to find a pass through. You get a few seconds of warning and then a choice. Bank early and go around for nothing. Thread a gap if you fancy it. Or climb over the top, which does work, but costs most of your stamina bar and leaves you at the summit with nothing in the tank and a hawk closing in.
The weather changes as you fly. Every few hundred metres the sky picks something new at random and fades into it over about ten seconds — clear blue, thick fog that swallows the trees a short way ahead, or a thunderstorm with black cloud, driving rain and lightning that comes down on the forest and leaves a tree smoking behind you. None of it is scenery you can ignore: fog and storm both cost you the sight of the ground and the mountains, and the hawk does not care that you cannot see.
reading the HUD
Three gauges, learnable in a single run. The tall bar on the left is your altitude above the ground beneath you — not above sea level, because the ground is what you actually hit. It goes pink when you are low and red when you are seconds from landing the hard way. The bar across the bottom is stamina. The meter in the bottom right is the hawk, and it runs the opposite way round from the other two: it fills as the hawk closes, so empty means safe and full means it is already on you.
setting up the camera
Press "play with camera" and your browser will ask for permission. A short, three-step calibration follows: it finds you, learns your neutral posture so you don't have to sit perfectly square, and asks for two test flaps. You can skip it, or switch to keys, at any point.
controls
- Flap: sweep both arms up and back down. The tracker reads the size of the stroke rather than a fixed height, so a big arm-swinging flap and a small one in front of a laptop both count. On a keyboard, Space, W or ↑. On touch, tap.
- Arms beat keys. A flap you throw with your arms lifts you about a third higher than one you tap, for the same stamina — roughly one flap every three seconds instead of every two. Throwing your whole arms down is slower and more tiring than hitting the space bar, so it ought to buy you something.
- Turn: lean your upper body left or right. On a keyboard, A / D or ← / →. On touch, drag left or right.
- Dive: cross both arms in front of you and hold. On a keyboard, S, ↓ or Shift. On touch, press and hold, or use a second finger.
- Pause · mute · restart: P · M · R on desktop, or the pause button on touch.
tips & tricks
- Flap less than you think. One good flap holds you up for roughly two seconds. Beginners flap constantly, drain the stamina bar, and then have nothing left when it matters.
- Keep height in the bank. Altitude is your margin for error. Fly high enough that one bad moment costs you height instead of the whole run.
- Banking costs lift. A hard turn sheds altitude, so plan on an extra flap coming out of one.
- Save the dive for the screech. A dive is your escape from a swoop, not a way to travel. Use it when the hawk commits, then climb back out.
- Go round the mountain, not over it. The climb costs stamina you will want for the next swoop, and you arrive at the crest with an empty meter. Turn the moment bare rock comes out of the fog and it costs you a handful of metres.
- Climb before the fog does. Height is sight. When the weather turns, a few extra metres of altitude buys back most of the warning that the murk took away.
- Never turn back toward the hawk. Circling looks clever and flies you straight into it. Long, gentle curves keep it behind you.
- Gliding refills you. A stretch of quiet gliding is not wasted time — it is how the stamina bar comes back.
- In hunt mode, climb before you close. Flapping is loud. Gain your height while the bird is still a long way off, then glide the last stretch in silence and stoop on it.
- Come in from behind, in hunt mode. A bird watches where it is going, so one you approach from its blind side lets you get half again as close before it bolts.
- Do not follow it into the trees. A frightened bird runs for the canopy because it can fly through what you cannot. Break off, climb, and take it on the next pass — it cannot sprint for long.
- Stand back from the camera. The tracking wants both hands in frame with your arms out wide. If it says it can't see you, step back and put the light in front of you.
screenshots
your camera and your privacy
The webcam is optional and never turns on by itself — nothing happens until you press "play with camera" and grant permission. When you do, the video is analysed on your own device by a pose-detection model running inside the browser tab. No video, images or body-position data are uploaded, recorded or stored, and none of it reaches us. Close the tab and it is gone. The only thing kept is a few calibration numbers in your browser's local storage. Full details are in our privacy policy.
features
- Motion controls that use your whole upper body — flap your arms to fly, lean to turn, cross your arms to dive.
- Pose tracking that runs entirely on your device, with nothing uploaded or recorded.
- An endless low-poly forest generated as you fly, so it never ends and never repeats.
- Mountains scattered at random across the map — lone peaks and long ranges, all above the treeline, each one something to fly around, thread, or spend your whole stamina bar climbing over.
- Weather that cycles at random as you fly — clear skies, blinding fog, and thunderstorms with rain, lightning strikes and smoking trees.
- A hawk that stalks, telegraphs its swoop, and gets bolder the longer you survive.
- Two modes over the same forest — escape the hawk for distance, or fly the hawk yourself and hunt for your supper against a hunger clock. Separate best scores.
- Prey that hear your wings, watch their blind side, jink out of a committed stoop and run for the canopy you cannot follow them into.
- A stamina system that turns flying into a rhythm instead of button-mashing.
- Complete keyboard and touch controls — no webcam required.
- Every sound synthesised live in your browser and every shape drawn in code — zero image and audio files in the whole game.
frequently asked questions
Do I need a webcam to play Just Flap Bro?
No. The camera is one of two ways to play. Keyboard controls (Space to flap, A and D to turn, S to dive) and touch controls (tap, drag, hold) play the complete game, and the camera is never requested unless you press the camera button.
Is my webcam footage uploaded or recorded?
No. The pose-detection model runs inside your own browser, so camera frames are analysed on your device and discarded immediately. No video, images or body-position data are uploaded, recorded or stored, and none of it reaches us or anyone else. See our privacy policy for the detail.
Why can't the game see me?
Usually you're too close to the camera, or a desk is hiding your hands. Step back until both hands stay in frame with your arms stretched out wide, and put your light source in front of you rather than behind you. The little camera panel turns lime when it has a clear read on you.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. Tap to flap, drag to turn, and hold (or use a second finger) to dive. The camera controls work on newer phones too — prop the phone up about a metre away so it can see your arms.
What is hunt mode?
The same forest with the roles swapped. You fly the hawk and chase the little birds, and there is no predator behind you — the clock is a hunger meter that only a catch refills. Your score is birds caught, and it keeps its own best, so a bad hunt never touches your distance record. Pick it on the title screen before you start.
How do I actually catch a bird in hunt mode?
From above, and quietly. Flapping is loud enough that a bird starts running before you are in range, so gain your height early and then glide the last stretch and stoop. Approach from behind where it cannot see you. If you miss, do not chase it into the canopy — climb, let it tire, and take it on the second pass.
Should I fly over the mountains or around them?
Around, almost always. Climbing over costs most of your stamina bar, and you arrive at the summit with nothing left for the next swoop. Bank as soon as bare rock comes out of the fog and it costs you a few metres of distance instead. Going over is worth it only when the hawk has cut off the turn.
Does the weather actually do anything?
Yes. Fog and storms both shorten how far ahead you can see, which is how much warning you get about a mountain, a tree or the ground. The lightning itself cannot hurt you — it strikes the forest, not you — but the dark and the rain make everything else harder to read. The weather is announced on screen when it starts to change, and it always fades in rather than snapping, so you get time to climb.
Is Just Flap Bro free?
Completely. There's no download, no account and no paywall — open the play page and start flapping.
How do I get a better distance?
Stop flapping so much. Find the slowest rhythm that holds your altitude, keep your stamina above a quarter, fly high enough that a mistake is survivable, and save your dives for the moment the hawk screeches. Your best distance is saved on your device.
Who made Just Flap Bro?
It's made by brainrotlabs, a tiny independent studio that builds its web games entirely in code. Read more about the studio.