Ava Airborne guide - Tips and tricks to soar onto the leaderboards

Ava Airborne is an endless runner much in the same vein as something like Alto's Odyssey, but instead of riding over the ground with a board of some kind, you pilot a hang glider and try to avoid the ground at all costs. With this new mode of transportation comes some unique gameplay mechanics that make Ava unlike other runners you've played, so make sure to keep the following tips in mind to make sure you soar your way onto the leaderboards:

Focus on unlocks over score

When you're just starting out, the best way to make sure you can maximize your score in Ava Airborne is by not thinking too much about making your runs longer or scoring big. I know, I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but this is because Ava Airborne is full of unlocks and it's best to focus on getting those first to make sure you can have super long, high scoring runs in the future.

You might think that scoring well in the game will lead you to unlocks faster, but that is exactly where you'd be wrong. Ava Airborne is a little nontraditional in its upgrade system in that it only unlocks a maximum of one set of upgrades per flight. So, even if you soar over 10k meters in one run, all of the points you earn will only go as high as your next level before stopping and squandering the rest. So do yourself a favor and focus on the level grind before trying to go big.

Use trampolines to your advantage

In Ava, there are all sorts of hazards trying to knock you out of the sky, but there are times where you fall to the ground onto a trampoline, which then catapults you right back up in the air so you can keep going. You don't just have to wait for random chance to be saved by a trampoline, though. There are a few ways you can take advantage of trampolines, even when you aren't falling.

For instance, if you find yourself having lost a ton of speed high up in the air, you can dive down onto a trampoline to get some speed back and keep you pretty high up. Alternatively, if you're flying low to the ground and a tall obstacle appears, you can just bounce off a trampoline to get over it quickly.

Rockets every 1,500m

Ava doesn't always ride in a hang glider in every run. Every once in a while, you'll find yourself approaching a rocket powerup that can boost you further into a run without having to worry about enemies or obstacles, but did you know that this rocket doesn't just appear randomly?

In fact, it's so not random that you can reliably count on a rocket every 1,500 meters to set you blasting further ahead. This is useful to know because the rocket powerup activates almost automatically, meaning you can do some more daring and risky maneuvers to collect candy near a 1,500m mark without having to worry about plummeting to your death.