Tail Swing — Play Free Online

Tail Swing is a one-button arcade game about an animal with a very long tail. Instead of running or jumping in the usual way, you fling yourself through each level by swinging on that tail, grabbing on to the scenery and letting go at the right moment. It is a calm, short-burst game that rewards rhythm more than reflexes.

Each level is a course of platforms, gaps and spikes. You bounce, grab and swing your way across, collecting coins as you go. The coins unlock new animal characters, so there is a small collecting goal sitting behind the level-by-level progress. The game was made by the independent Stockholm studio A Small Game and is listed on Poki.

If you came to Doodle Jump for the feeling of climbing and timing one input at a time, this plays in a similar spirit: simple controls, and the challenge comes from when you act rather than what you press.

How to play

Swinging uses a single input. Click the mouse or press the spacebar to swing; on a phone or tablet, tap the screen. There is nothing else to learn, so the skill lies in judging the arc of the tail and choosing the instant to grab or release.

A round goes like this: you start a level, swing toward the next safe surface, collect any coins on the way, and avoid spikes and gaps. Falling into either sends you back to try again. Finish the level and the next, slightly harder one opens up.

Tips

• Time your swings rather than mashing the button. Early or late grabs are the usual cause of falling into a gap.
• Look ahead to where the tail will land before you commit, especially near spikes.
• Coins are worth collecting for the new animals, but staying alive comes first. Take a safer route and come back for a missed coin on a retry.
• Play at a steady pace. Short, relaxed attempts work better than rushing.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

Hoppenhelm and Bird Jumper are also about moving upward or across a course with careful timing, though they use different movement. Ovo 2 and OvO game are precision platformers where you control a character directly, which makes them more demanding than Tail Swing's single-button swings. Bouncy Basketball is another simple-controls game built around timing.

It suits quick sessions on a laptop or a phone, and since it runs in the browser there is nothing to install.