The whole game in one sentence
Your hero surfs forward on their own. Hold to rise, let go to glide back down. Fly to the pickups, dodge the bad guys, and reach the ship at the end of each city.
Controls
- Phone or tablet: press and hold the big HOVER button (bottom-left) to fly. Let go to sink. That's it — one thumb.
- Keyboard: hold Space to fly. Left/Right nudge your speed a little. Esc pauses.
- Menus: tap or click anything; tap it again (or the big GO button) to continue. On a keyboard, Space or Enter goes forward, arrows move the highlight, Esc or Backspace goes back. Mashing Space from the title screen gets you into a level with sensible defaults.
Pickups (every one does exactly what it looks like, every time)
- ⭐ Star — fires your hero's signature power.
- 🥷 Ninja Cloud — ninja mode: any bad guy you touch gets bonked and zooms back home.
- ✨ Silver Streak — a gentle tailwind, and bad guys bounce off you.
- 🧘 Yoga Cloud — calm protection: nothing can hurt you, and nobody gets bonked. Peace is a power too.
- ❤️ Heart — one more life. Every heart you still have at the end becomes points.
Without a power, bad guys are just obstacles to fly over. Only their big, slow, telegraphed swings can bump you, and bumping just costs a heart — there is no game over, ever. Catching powers one after another chains them for 2x and 3x points.
Choose your villains and how many
Before the cities you pick who is invading (Robots, Bananas, Mummies, Vampires or Surprise Me!) and how many bad guys: Standard, More, or Masses — a giggling flood of them pouring in from the edge of the screen. They never get tougher, there are just more to bonk.
Add Hover Kids to your Home Screen
On a phone the game is best as a Home Screen app: full screen, no browser bars, one tap to play.
- iPhone / iPad (Safari): tap the Share button, scroll and tap Add to Home Screen, then tap Add.
- Android (Chrome): open the game, hold the phone upright, and tap Add to Home Screen on the welcome card (or use the browser menu → Install app).
- Open Hover Kids from your Home Screen and turn the phone sideways.
Opened the link inside Instagram, Facebook or a mail app? Those browsers can't install apps — open hoverkids.com in Safari or Chrome first.
Tips for playing with little ones
- Two-year-olds love just holding the button and letting go. Flying up and floating down is the game at that age.
- Say the pickups out loud: "Star! Ninja cloud!" The pictures carry the meaning; the words come later.
- There is no losing. A bump costs a heart, zero hearts means a gentle restart at the last checkpoint. Celebrate the bonks, not the score.
- A full game is five cities and a secret sixth — about 15–20 minutes. After 20 minutes the game offers a quiet Sunset Card: a lovely moment to say "we're done for now".
- Hold the screen at arm's length in a bright room, and look far away every so often — the Sunset Card's hero does exactly that.