Tap the Dove. Dodge the storm. Don’t you dare hit that Eagle by accident.*
If Bird Battle is the personality game you play to start an argument with your coworkers, Bird Strike is the one you play at midnight when you just want to tap things really fast and feel good about it. Maybe work on those hand-eye coordination skills, too.
Same four birds. Completely different energy.
Bird Strike is a reflex game – and it just launched free at richardstep.com/games/bird-strike/.
What Is Bird Strike?
You are an air traffic controller with extremely poor impulse control. Birds keep appearing on your radar. You tap them. Storm clouds appear too – tap those and you lose points and your combo. Miss a bird entirely and your multiplier resets.
That’s the core loop. Fast, satisfying, slightly punishing.
What makes it more than just a clicker is the DOPE layer underneath: each of the four bird types behaves differently, scores differently, and demands a different kind of attention. Just like the people they represent.
The Four Birds – How They Play
🕊️ Dove – 10 points
Slow, large, easy to hit. The Dove is forgiving – it hangs around longest before disappearing and scores the least. Perfect for building early combos without risk. Just like the actual Dove personality type: approachable, low-pressure, but not where the big rewards are.
🦅 Eagle – 15 points
Fast and decisive. The Eagle moves quickly across the field and disappears without much warning. You have to be decisive to catch it – hesitate and it’s gone. Sound familiar?
🦉 Owl – 25 points
The highest value target on the board, and the smallest. The Owl is a precision hit – easy to miss, worth the effort when you connect. In Predator mode the Owl actually shrinks further as time runs out, which is either a design decision or a personality test in itself.
🦚 Peacock – 20 points
Mid-speed, mid-size, reliably attention-grabbing. The Peacock shows up often in Flock mode, where multiple birds appear simultaneously, because it knows how to make itself the center of attention even in a crowd.
⛈️ Storm Cloud – minus 40 points
Not a bird. Do not tap this. The storm cloud appears without warning, lingers just long enough to tempt you, and costs you dearly if you flinch. At high combo multipliers, accidentally hitting a storm can cost you hundreds of points in a single tap.
Three Modes, Progressively Unlocked
Bird Strike isn’t one game – it’s three, and you have to earn your way into the harder ones.
Rookie – 30 Seconds
One bird at a time. Reasonable despawn windows. Storm clouds appear occasionally but not aggressively. This is where you learn the rhythm: tap the bird, build your combo, don’t panic when the storm shows up.
Rookie is also where you build toward the 200-point threshold that unlocks Flock mode. Most players get there on their second or third run.
Flock – 40 Seconds (unlock at 200 pts)
Everything gets louder. Up to three birds appear simultaneously, each on their own despawn timer. You have to prioritize – do you go for the high-value Owl in the corner, or the Peacock that’s about to disappear in the center?
Flock mode also introduces power-ups: glowing pickups that appear periodically and vanish after four seconds if you don’t catch them. Three types:
- ❤️ +5 seconds – a lifeline when the timer is running low
- 🔥 2x combo – doubles your current multiplier instantly
- ⭐ +40 bonus points – straight points, no strings attached
Power-ups only reveal what they are when you tap them – before that, they just pulse on screen. Part of the game is deciding whether to chase them or stay focused on birds.
Predator – 50 Seconds (unlock at 500 pts)
No power-ups. No forgiveness. Miss a bird and you lose 8 points in addition to your combo reset. Storm clouds appear more frequently. And the targets physically shrink as time runs out – the longer the game goes, the smaller and harder to hit everything becomes.
Predator mode is for people who played Rookie and Flock until the mechanics felt automatic, and then wanted something that would punish them for getting comfortable. The Owl in Predator mode, near the end of a run, is roughly the size of a pencil tip.
The Combo System
Every five birds you hit in a row increases your combo multiplier by one. A 10-point Dove hit at x5 combo is worth 50 points. A 25-point Owl hit at x8 combo is worth 200 points – more than an entire Rookie run.
The combo ring in the bottom-right corner tracks your current multiplier and color-shifts as it climbs: gold at low combos, amber in the middle, red when you’re deep into a streak. When it goes red, every tap matters enormously – and every miss hurts.
This is intentional. The game rewards sustained accuracy more than raw speed. Frantic tapping with no discipline will get you a lower score than calm, focused play with a healthy multiplier. Which, again, may say something about you.
Built for Mobile
52% of the people who visit RichardStep.com are on phones – so Bird Strike was designed from the ground up to work on a small screen with one thumb.
On mobile the game goes full-screen, using the entire display with no wasted space. Targets are scaled up for finger-sized tapping. Hit detection uses a generous radius so near-misses register rather than frustrating you. Despawn timers are slightly longer to account for the reaction time difference between a mouse click and a tap.
On desktop, a crosshair reticle follows your cursor and the hit area matches the visible circle – what you see is what counts.
The game works on any modern browser, any screen size, with no app download, no login, and no account required.
How the Scoring Works
To give you a sense of what the thresholds feel like in practice:
- Under 100 points – you’re still learning the despawn timing
- 100–200 points – solid Rookie run, Flock is unlocking soon
- 200–400 points – comfortable in Flock, starting to feel the combo system
- 400–500 points – you’ve internalized the priority system, Predator is close
- 500+ points – Predator unlocked; things are about to get harder
- 800+ points – you have a problem and we respect it!
Personal bests are saved locally per mode, so each time you come back you’re chasing your own high score rather than a global leaderboard. The competition is with yourself – which is appropriate for a self-assessment platform.
The DOPE Connection
Bird Strike is a reflex game first. But the DOPE layer isn’t just aesthetic.
The bird you find yourself consistently hitting most often – across multiple runs, across multiple modes – tends to be the bird that’s easiest for you to read. You anticipate it. You’re drawn to it. You tap it before you consciously decide to.
After each run, Bird Strike tells you which bird you hit most and asks the obvious question: coincidence?
The end screen links to the full DOPE 4 Bird Personality Test for anyone who wants an actual answer rather than a theory. Because knowing you kept swatting Owls is interesting. Knowing why is where it gets useful.
How to Play
Bird Strike is free and lives at: https://richardstep.com/games/
No login. No download. Works on phone, tablet, and desktop.
Select your mode – Rookie to start – tap Launch, and start swatting. Your personal bests save automatically in your browser between sessions, so your unlocks and high scores persist when you come back.
One tip: don’t chase the storm clouds. You will be tempted. Everyone is tempted. Don’t. We know it can look like a dove on some devices – it isn’t.
Want to Know Which Bird You Actually Are?
Bird Strike will tell you which bird you kept hitting. The DOPE test will tell you which bird you actually are – which may or may not be the same thing.
Take the free DOPE 4 Bird Personality Test →
Free, no login required. The original test that started all of this.
Get the DOPE Workbook →
For the deep-divers: a full breakdown of your type, relationship compatibility, career patterns, and how to actually use what you learn about yourself. Built for people who want more than a label.
More Games at the RichardStep Games Hub
Bird Strike joins the team in a growing collection of free personality games at RichardStep.com: