To play Flappy Kittens, tap anywhere on the screen to make your cat hop upward, and keep tapping to fly through the gaps between the towers. Touching a tower or the ground ends the run, and your score is the number of towers you pass. Fish treats you grab on the way are spent in the shop on new cats and worlds. The game shows a short How to Play card before your first run, and this guide covers everything that card leaves out.
Flappy Kittens is the App Store name. On Google Play the same game is called Flappy Cat, because that name was already taken on Apple’s store. Everything below applies to both.
What’s the goal in Flappy Kittens? #
There are two goals, and they pull against each other. The first is your score: pass as many towers as you can in one run. The second is fish, which buy new cats and backgrounds. Fish often float close to the edge of a gap, so a lot of the game is deciding when a treat is worth the risk.
There are no levels and no story. Every run starts from zero, and the game gets harder the further you get.
Your first run, step by step #
- Open the app. The main menu shows your best score, your fish total, a big PLAY button and three smaller ones: Shop, Trophies and Settings.
- Tap PLAY. The first time, a How to Play card appears with four tips and the three power-ups. Tap “Let’s Play!” to start.
- Tap to flap. Each tap gives your cat the same small hop. Between taps, gravity pulls it down.
- Fly through the gap in each tower. Every tower you pass adds one point.
- Grab fish when they’re easy to reach. About two towers in three carry one.
- Read the game-over card. When you crash, it shows your score, your best, a medal if you earned one, the fish from that run and your longest combo.
- Go again. Play Again starts a new run immediately. Menu takes you back to spend your fish.
Your first runs will probably end in single digits. That’s normal, and most players find the rhythm within a few minutes.
How do the controls work? #
Every tap gives exactly the same lift. Holding your finger down doesn’t make the cat climb higher, and pressing hard does nothing extra. Only the timing of the tap matters, so light, quick taps work best.
Two details make the controls fairer than they look. The game remembers a tap made a split second too early (about an eighth of a second) and still counts it. And the cat’s collision area is a circle a little smaller than its drawing, so an ear brushing the edge of a tower won’t end your run. You’ll still crash if the body clips a tower, so don’t aim for the edges.
The physics run at a fixed 120 steps per second no matter what your screen does, so a tap behaves the same on an old phone and a new one. For advice on rhythm and where to sit in each gap, see our Flappy Bird tips. They work the same way here.
How does scoring work? #
Your score and your fish are counted separately.
| What you do | What you get |
|---|---|
| Pass a tower | 1 point |
| Grab a fish | 1 fish, times your combo |
| Grab a golden fish | 5 fish, times your combo |
| Near miss (squeak past a tower’s edge) | 1 fish, times your combo |
| Earn a trophy | 25 to 1,000 bonus fish |
Roughly one fish in eight is golden. A near miss counts when your cat passes through a gap within a whisker of the edge without touching it.
How do combos work? #
Every fish and every near miss adds one to your combo. From the second pickup in a chain, the combo multiplies each new fish: the second is worth double, the third triple, and so on up to ×8. The chain breaks if three seconds pass without another fish or near miss. At ×8 a golden fish is worth 40.
Combos multiply fish, never your score. Chasing a combo is how you get rich, and flying safely is how you set records, so you’ll switch between the two during a run.
What do the power-ups do? #
Power-ups start floating in some gaps once your score passes 5. They appear at most every seventh tower, and only some of the time.
| Power-up | What it does | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Milk Shield | Absorbs one crash | Until it’s used |
| Fish Magnet | Pulls nearby fish toward you | 7 seconds |
| Cat Nap | Slows the whole world to about 60% speed | 5 seconds |
The Milk Shield is the one to go out of your way for, since it saves a run. The Magnet lets you stay in the safe middle of each gap and still collect the fish around you. A Cat Nap is a breather, so use those slow seconds to settle your rhythm.
How does the game get harder? #
Flappy Kittens starts gentler than Flappy Bird and ends up harder. Every 4 points, three things change at once: the towers move a little faster, the gaps shrink a little, and the towers come a little closer together. Around a score of 50 the towers reach top speed, and by the mid-60s the gaps are as narrow as they’ll get.
From a score of 15, some towers start sliding up and down. The whole column moves, so the gap keeps its size, but you have to meet it where it’s going to be. At first about one tower in four moves. By a score of 60 it’s closer to six in ten. That’s the wall most players hit, and we explain why this kind of difficulty feels so punishing in why Flappy Bird is so hard.
What’s on the game-over screen? #
- Medal: bronze at 8 points, silver at 18, gold at 35, platinum at 60 and diamond at 100. Medals rate a single run.
- Score and Best: the title reads “New Best!” instead of “Game Over” when you set a record.
- Fish and combo: how many fish the run earned and your longest chain.
- 2× Fish: watch an optional ad to double the fish from that run.
- Share: creates a picture card with your score, best, medal, cat and world, ready for a group chat.
Right after a crash you may also see a “Save me!” offer, once per run. Watch an ad and you carry on from where you were, with five seconds to decide. It’s optional, and if you want a clean record, let the run end.
What can you buy in the shop? #
The shop has two tabs, Cats and Themes, and everything costs fish. There’s no way to buy fish with real money. The only extra is a free-fish button that gives you 75 fish for watching a short ad.
| Cat | Cost |
|---|---|
| Tangerine (orange tabby) | Free, your starter |
| Pebble | 80 fish |
| Mr. Mittens (tuxedo) | 160 fish |
| Marshmallow | 260 fish |
| Patches (calico) | 420 fish |
| Coco (Siamese) | 600 fish |
| Oreo (panda-cat) | 850 fish |
| Bubblegum | 1,100 fish |
| Sprout | 1,400 fish |
| Mochi | 1,750 fish |
| Ziggy | 2,200 fish |
| Sir Goldfur | Reach a score of 50 |
| Nebula | Reach a score of 100 |
| Prism | Reach a ×8 combo |
Worlds work the same way. Sunny Meadow is free, Cherry Blossom costs 300 fish, Golden Hour 450, Starry Night 700, Cotton Candy 1,000, Coral Reef 1,500 and Northern Lights 2,000. Deep Space can’t be bought at all: you get it by collecting all 14 cats.
Cats and worlds are purely cosmetic. Every cat is the same size and flies the same way, and each world changes only the look and the drifting weather (petals, snow, stars or bubbles). Buying something equips it straight away, and you can tap anything you own to switch back. Trophies pay out a lot of fish too, and our Flappy Kittens achievements guide lists all 17 with the best order to collect them.
Which settings should you change? #
Open Settings from the main menu:
- Music and Sound FX have separate sliders. Many players keep the effects up and the music down, since the flap and scoring sounds help your timing.
- Vibration turns haptic feedback on or off.
- Daily reminder is on by default and sends one notification a day. Switch it off if you’d rather not be nudged.
- How to Play shows the tutorial card again.
- Reset Progress erases your high score, fish, cats, worlds and trophies. It asks you to confirm, and it can’t be undone.
Where do ads appear? #
Flappy Kittens is free and paid for by ads, and it keeps them out of your runs:
- A banner sits in its own strip below the play area, so it can’t cover a tower or catch a stray tap.
- A full-screen ad can appear between runs, but never in your first two minutes of a session, never more than once every three minutes, and only after several game overs. It’s skipped after a run where you used a revive and after a new best.
- The revive, 2× Fish and the free-fish gift are ads you choose to watch, and you can ignore all three.
On iPhone the game asks whether it may track you across other apps. If you say no, you still see ads, just not personalized ones.
Frequently asked questions #
Is Flappy Kittens free? #
Yes. It’s free to download and play, and it’s supported by ads. There are no in-app purchases, so every fish, cat and world comes from playing or from optional ads.
Does Flappy Kittens work offline? #
Yes, it plays fully offline. Your scores, fish and cats are saved on your phone, and there’s no account to create. That also means there’s no cloud save, so your collection won’t follow you to a new phone the way an account-based game would.
Why is it called Flappy Cat on Google Play? #
It’s the same game with two names. The Flappy Cat name was already taken on the App Store, so the iPhone and iPad version is listed as Flappy Kittens.
Do different cats fly differently? #
No. Every cat has the same size, speed and hop. Cats and worlds only change how the game looks, so pick whichever you like best.
Is Flappy Kittens OK for kids? #
It’s rated Everyone / 4+ and has no violence. It shows ads, but there are no in-app purchases, so a child can’t spend money inside the game.