Bat Game

Night Flight is a bat game about the flying animal, not the baseball kind. You are a little bat out hunting in pitch-dark caves and moonlit woods, and you can barely see a thing. Send out an echolocation ping and a ring spreads from your bat, lighting up walls, branches, bugs and hazards as glowing outlines for a moment before they fade back into the dark. Catch enough moths and mosquitoes to fill your hunger meter, then fly home to your roost before dawn. You can play this bat game online free in your browser with no download, on a keyboard, a mouse or a phone’s touch screen.

How to play

• Fly freely: use the arrow keys or WASD to fly in any of eight directions. There is no flapping button, and your bat hovers when you let go. On a phone or with a mouse, hold down on the game and drag, and the bat flies toward your finger or pointer.
• Ping to see: press Space, tap or click the game quickly, or press the Ping button. The ring travels outward, and anything it reaches inside its range glows and then fades over about two seconds. Hold Space to keep pinging.
• Eat: fly into insects to eat them. A moth fills 15 points of hunger and a mosquito fills 6.
• Get home: when the meter is full, the roost lights up and a yellow arrow at the edge of the screen points the way. Reach the roost before the dawn timer runs out to finish the night. If the sun comes up first, just try again.

Hazards

Nothing here is scary, and hazards only cost you time:

• Stalactites hang from cave ceilings. Bumping one knocks your bat down and costs 4 seconds.
• Spiderwebs slow you to a crawl while you are tangled and for a moment after.
• Owls patrol the forest. Their yellow eyes always glow a little. If an owl catches you, it costs 8 seconds and the owl flies off for a few seconds.

Nights, stars and flowers

There are 12 nights. Nights 1 to 4, 9 and 11 are dark caves, and nights 5 to 8, 10 and 12 are moonlit forests with owls. Maps and appetites grow each night. Finishing a night unlocks the next, and you can earn up to three stars:

• one star for getting home before dawn,
• one star for getting home with at least 35 percent of the night left,
• and a bonus star. In the forest, pollinate every pale night flower by flying past it, like a nectar bat. In a cave, eat every insect.

Your score is the hunger you collected, plus 25 for each flower and 2 for every second of night left. Your stars, best scores and unlocked nights are saved in your browser.

Tips

• Ping, then move. The outlines fade fast, so fly toward the bugs you saw before the glow is gone.
• Moths are worth more. A moth gives over twice the hunger of a mosquito, so it is worth a short detour.
• Remember the roost. On the bigger nights, head back as soon as the meter turns green.
• Slip past owls. Owls fly back and forth along one path, so dart past behind one.

Real bat facts behind the game

• Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly by flapping their wings.
• Many bats use echolocation. They make high-pitched calls, many of them too high for people to hear, and listen for the echoes to find their way and catch insects in the dark.
• Bats are not blind. Many fruit bats rely mostly on their eyes and noses rather than echolocation.
• Not all bats eat insects. Some eat fruit, and others drink nectar from flowers and help pollinate plants such as agave as they feed.
• Insect-eating bats like the little brown bat can eat a large number of insects in a single night.

FAQ

Is this bat game free?

Yes. It is free to play with no account and nothing to install. Press Play, Space or Enter to start.

Does it work on phones and Chromebooks?

Yes. On a phone or tablet, hold and drag on the game to steer and tap quickly to ping, or use the Ping button. The page won’t scroll while you play. On a Chromebook or laptop, use the arrow keys or WASD and Space.

Can I pause?

Press P or Esc, or use the Pause button. The game also pauses if you switch tabs. Press R to restart the current night and M to turn the sound on or off.

Want more spooky-season fun? Try the Vampire Game, where little Vlad can turn into a bat to sneak home before sunrise, or the Halloween Game.