Ostrich Duel Tips: Height Control, Flapping and Clearing Waves

Updated October 2026

Ostrich Duel puts you on a flying ostrich in a small arena over a lava pit, with a handful of red riders flapping around you. When two riders collide, the one who is higher wins and the lower one goes down. That single rule decides everything, so the whole game is really about controlling your height relative to everyone else's. This guide explains exactly how the flap works, what counts as "higher", how the red riders behave and how to use the platforms and the lava in your favour. Every number below comes from the game's code, and anything we measured by simulation is labelled as such.

How a flap really works

Tap the left half of the arena to flap with a push to the left, or the right half for a push to the right. A flap does not add lift on top of what you already have. It sets your upward speed to one fixed value every time. That has two practical effects. Flapping while you are already rising quickly gains you almost nothing, and flapping while you are falling cancels the fall instantly. A flap is a reset button for your vertical motion.

By our calculation from the game's gravity and flap strength, a single flap from a hover lifts you about 58 pixels and reaches the top of its arc about a third of a second later. Holding your finger down repeats the flap every 0.23 seconds, which in our simulation climbs at roughly 227 pixels per second. Tapping faster than that climbs faster, because each tap resets the upward speed sooner.

Every flap also adds a sideways push of 90 in the direction you tapped, up to a top speed of 280. Sideways speed fades slowly on its own; by our calculation you keep a little under three quarters of it after one second. While holding, you can slide your finger across the middle of the arena to switch the push to the other side without lifting off.

The height rule, to the pixel

The arena is measured in fixed units, 360 across and 640 down, and stretched to fit your screen, so every phone plays the same; on a typical phone a unit is about a pixel. A collision happens when the centres of two riders come within 26 units of each other. The game then compares heights only. It does not care who is moving faster, who is flapping or who is falling:

• You are more than 9 units higher: the red rider is defeated, you score 100 and get a small upward bounce.
• You are more than 9 units lower: you lose a life.
• Within 9 units of each other: nobody falls. Both riders are knocked apart sideways and given a small hop.

Nine units is only about a third of a rider's body width, so many close meetings end in a bounce. A bounce is not a failure; it simply resets the situation. What you want to avoid is meeting an enemy while you are coming down past it, because a falling rider sinks through that nine-unit band quickly.

The ceiling is not a hiding place. Any rider that flies into it, you included, is knocked back down, so nobody can stay pinned at the very top. A rider that has just bounced off the ceiling is sinking, which is your chance to meet it from slightly higher; a rider still climbing toward the ceiling is usually above you, so let it come down first.

Knowing the arena

There are four platforms. A wide one sits low in the middle of the arena, two ledges hang from the left and right sides at mid-height, and a narrower one floats near the top in the centre. All of them can be landed on from above but are open from below, so you can fly straight up through any platform and come to rest on top of it.

The left and right edges wrap around: fly off one side and you appear on the other immediately. Enemies wrap too, and the game checks collisions across the seam, so an edge is a quick way to break off a chase, not a hiding place.

The bottom strip is lava. Touching it costs a life even while you are blinking and invulnerable after a respawn, so never dive low to chase a rider.

How the red riders think

Red riders follow simple rules. Ten times a second each one has a 28% chance to flap, with a slightly weaker flap than yours. Every one to two and a half seconds each one picks a new horizontal target, and about a third of the time that target is near you. They do not react to your height and they never deliberately dodge.

That has three consequences you can exploit.

• Their height wanders at random. Instead of chasing a rider, position yourself above the area it is heading toward and let it rise into you from below.
• They often drift high. In our simplified simulation of their flapping, riders spent a large share of their time in the top fifth of the arena. Stay a little below the ceiling crowd rather than in it.
• They fall into the lava on their own. A rider that lands in the lava is removed and counts toward clearing the wave, although you get no 100 points for it. On the first wave our simplified simulation saw roughly half of the riders drop in within half a minute; later riders flap more often and fall in less.

The number of riders grows by one each wave: three on the first wave, then four, five, six, and seven from the fifth wave on. After that the count stays at seven, but the riders themselves keep improving every wave with no limit: they fly faster, flap more often, chase you more and, from the second wave on, increasingly climb above you before diving. By the late teens they climb faster than you can and outrun you sideways, so every run eventually ends. Clearing a wave, however the riders went down, is worth a 500 point bonus.

A plan for each wave

1. Take your time before the first tap. Nothing moves until you tap, and your first tap also starts a short spell of blinking protection; use it to climb.
2. Find altitude, but not the ceiling. A height a little below the upper platform lets you drop onto riders crossing below and still leaves room above you.
3. Attack from above at a gentle angle. Approach slightly higher than the target and arrive with a flap just finished, so you are drifting rather than falling at contact.
4. Break off ties. After a bounce, climb away before trying again instead of re-engaging at the same height.
5. Let the lava work. When only one or two riders remain and they are low, stay safely above them; they may finish the wave for you.

Lives and recovery

You have three lives. After losing one there is a pause of 0.9 seconds, then you reappear in the centre of the arena, a little below the top platform, blinking for 1.5 seconds. While blinking, enemy lances cannot hurt you but you can still defeat riders you hit from above, so a respawn into a crowd is a chance to strike, not just to escape. The blink does not protect you from lava.

Points come from two places only: 100 per rider you defeat and 500 per wave cleared. Your best score is kept on your device, and any score above zero can be saved to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card.