NearMiss
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Arcade flight game · Free on the App Store

NearMiss

Sky survival

You fly one plane with your thumbs on the edges of the screen, and the sky keeps filling with guided missiles. Keeping your distance scores nothing. Let one pass close enough to scrape your paint and it pays.

iOS is a public release. Android is a closed Alpha on Google Play, so you have to be added to the tester list before you can install it.

NearMiss key art: a white sixth-generation fighter banking through a dark storm lit by blue lightning, with two missiles burning past it.
The illustrated NearMiss app icon, not a gameplay capture.

The game

Near misses pay

NearMiss is a portrait arcade flight game. You fly one plane, and however many missiles you shake off, more launch. Each launch warns you first: a lock, then a tone, then a moment before the missile commits.

What a graze buys you

A missile that passes at arm's length pays, adds to your combo multiplier and fills the FOCUS meter. FOCUS slows the world for a second or two, so playing it safe leaves you without the one thing that helps when the sky gets unreadable.

Make two missiles collide and you score more than grazing either one. Graze a new missile type up close and you can capture it and fly it as your own auto-firing interceptor.

  • Portrait
  • One or two thumbs
  • Solo works offline
  • Free
Play Store screenshot headed “Chase the perfect near miss — build combos as the threat escalates”, showing a COMBO ×2.0 readout and a MID-AIR! +225 score pop where two missiles collided.
A ×2.0 combo and 225 for a mid-air.

How you fly

Four controls, no buttons

Everything is a hold or a gesture at the edge of the screen. LOOP and ROLL each cost a cooldown, so you want to be sure before you spend one.

Hold a side

Bank

Steer. The nose is also the gun, and auto-fire follows it, so taking a shot costs you your dodge.

Flick down

LOOP

Reverses your heading, so pursuers overshoot. Once it commits, missiles pass straight through you. Weather still hits.

Drag sideways

ROLL

Throws you sideways and slings nearby missiles off their line. Even the LEVIATHAN loses track until the roll ends.

Hold both sides

FOCUS

Spends grazing energy to slow everything down for a beat.

Let go before a gesture commits and nothing is spent. FLIGHT SCHOOL walks you through all of it, then drops you into a real sortie.

Play Store screenshot headed “Turn the chase around — loop, roll, and redirect pursuing missiles”, showing a fighter cutting hard left with two missile contrails bending away behind it.
A hard left, two contrails bending away.

Weather

Storms you can fly inside

Storms drift, break apart, merge again and shadow everything under them. Fly into one and you lose sight of the sky, and of whatever is behind you.

Skim the edge

You can only charge on a medium-sized cloud or bigger; scattered puffs do nothing. Fly along the outer edge and a thread of lightning latches on. It reaches at most 70% of the clear-view circle's radius, measured out from the cloud edge, so you have to hug the wall. Once it has latched on, you can drift a little further before it lets go. Hold it three seconds and the charge lands. A fifth-generation fighter throws CHAIN LIGHTNING, which jumps between nearby missiles. The Gen 6 Wraith stores a STORM ARC instead: it holds the charge until a missile comes close, redirects the stored lightning into that missile, then sits on a 20-second cooldown.

Play Store screenshot headed “Master the Storm Arc — skim cloud edges, redirect lightning”, showing white lightning arcing from the aircraft through a glowing cloud into a missile.
Lightning leaving the airframe and landing in a missile.

What's chasing you

Six kinds of missile

Early missiles chase your current position, so a hard turn beats them. Later ones aim where you'll be, and the last ones already know you're turning. Every one of them can be beaten, and no two the same way.

Common

Stray

Chases the spot you're in, wobbles, runs short of fuel. Any real turn leaves it behind.

Uncommon

Mutt

The same missile with the wobble taken out and more fuel in the tank.

Rare

Hound

Aims where you're going, with no reaction delay. Reverse and it over-commits.

Epic

Asp

Fast and clumsy until it drops a stage mid-flight, then slow and agile. The separation is your tell.

Legendary

Phoenix

Reads your turn, sprints as it closes, and re-locks if you break its line.

Mythic

Leviathan

The boss. Longest warning in the game, and a full armour bar won't save you. SURVIVE

The LEVIATHAN

You hear it coming long before you see it. Armour will not absorb the hit and steering will not clear its line, so LOOP, or ROLL to break its track.

Survive that pass and it sheds a stage: slower, better at turning, with a health pool. Something has to shoot it down, and a captured missile will.

Play Store screenshot headed “Outfly the storm — read the chase, own the sky”, showing a fighter between towering sunlit cloud banks with two missiles converging from below.
Cloud on both sides and two missiles closing from below.

Hangar

Six generations of aircraft

The hangar runs from a first-generation Sabre to a sixth-generation prototype. Most generations come in average, agile and fast trims that trade speed, turn rate, armour and gun against each other. Credits from your runs upgrade whatever you are flying.

Gen 1

F-86 Sabre · MiG-15 · Meteor

Where everyone starts.

Gen 2

MiG-21 · F-5 Tiger · F-104 Starfighter

Quicker and tougher, and it turns harder.

Gen 3

F-4 Phantom · MiG-23 · F-111 Aardvark

Gen 2's armour, a faster turn and a harder-hitting gun.

Gen 4

F-16 Falcon · F-18 Hornet · F-15 Eagle

The happy middle: another armour step and a real turn rate.

Gen 5

F-22 Raptor · Su-57 · F-35 Lightning

CHAIN LIGHTNING: one strike that jumps between nearby missiles.

Gen 6

Chenzoss Wraith

STORM ARC: a cloud-fed strike, in place of FOCUS.

The Wraith arms itself on the storm, so the only way to charge it is to fly close to the thing that can kill you.

The models are adapted from CC BY 4.0 work by the creators named on the credits page. Every upgrade is reachable on credits alone, without watching a rewarded ad.

Play Store screenshot headed “Build your hangar — six aircraft generations, distinct abilities”, showing the hangar with a Gen 1 Meteor selected, trim buttons, stat bars and locked Loop, Roll and Arsenal branches.
A Gen 1 METEOR selected, LOOP and ROLL still locked.

Ways to play

Solo, or with a squadron

Solo runs with the network off. SQUADRON puts up to three wingmates in the same storm as you, sharing one score.

ENDLESS

Solo · Offline

Open sky, no timer, and a threat mix that turns nastier the longer you stay up. Bank what you score and spend it in the hangar.

ESCORT

Solo · Convoy

A convoy you have to keep intact. Warnings come earlier than in ENDLESS, because protecting something else means flying around it: intercept, body-block, or bait the missiles into each other.

SQUADRON

Online · Up to 4

SURVIVAL and ESCORT with wingmates on one score. Invite friends, open the lobby, or quick play into a waiting one.

Play Store screenshot headed “Fly with your squadron — create or join shared survival runs”, showing the lobby with two of four players and Survival plus Invite Only settings.
Two of four seats filled, SURVIVAL, invite only.

Get NearMiss

Two ways in

iPhone and iPad

NearMiss is on the App Store, free.

Download on the App Store

Android

Android is a closed Alpha on Google Play. It is free, and it is still being worked on: expect bugs, rough performance on some phones, and balance and progress that can change from one build to the next.

  1. Enter the email address of the Google account you use in the Play Store.
  2. We save the request securely and email you when your access is ready.
  3. When access is ready, open Google Play and choose Become a tester, then install as usual.
Join the Android test

Rewarded ads are optional: a revive, doubled credits from a finished run, or skipping an upgrade step. A short transition ad may appear when you create or join a multiplayer lobby. The privacy notice has the detail.

The NearMiss Google Play feature graphic: the wordmark NEARMISS above SKY SURVIVAL and “Dodge the missiles. Send them back.”, beside illustrated art of a white fighter in a lightning-lit storm.
The Play listing's feature graphic: wordmark, tagline, illustrated art.