Chimp Lift

How To Play Chimp Lift

Poachers and smugglers have locked chimps in cages, from the jungle to a harbour town, a volcano island and out on the open sea. Fly out in your gyrocopter, break the cages open with coconuts, pick the chimps up, and fly them to safety. A mission is won when every chimp is home.

Controls

Fly: Press anywhere in the stick area and drag. Wherever your thumb lands becomes the centre of the stick. Push up to climb, down to descend, left or right to fly. Let go to hover.
Coconuts: Tap the coconut button to throw one. Hold it to keep throwing.
Landing: There is no land button. Descend gently onto anything flat and you touch down. Near the ground the gyrocopter slows itself for a soft landing, unless you push the stick all the way down (the ring turns red), which is a dive. Dive into the ground and you crash.
Keyboard: Arrow keys or WASD to fly, Shift + Down to dive, and Space (or J, K, Z, Enter) to throw.
Left-handed?: Settings lets you put the stick on the right.
Pausing: Use the pause button on the Cheery Chimp bar. The pause menu lets you resume, restart the mission, or pick another one.

Which way you face

Flying left or right: the gyrocopter faces that way and flings coconuts forward. Use this for anything in the air, for cages tucked under a roof, and for weak points you meet head-on.
Hovering: after a moment it turns to face you and drops coconuts straight down. Use this for cages, jeeps and launchers below you.

Rescuing chimps

Hit a cage with a coconut to break it open. Iron-banded cages need two hits.
Land on the same surface as the chimps. They won't hop from one ledge, rooftop or boat to another, so for a cage on a cliff, land on the cliff.
Wait while they run over and climb in. The basket holds 8. Hover low over them and they'll gather underneath; land right on top of them and they'll scatter.
Fly back and land on the pad by the hut. The chimps hop out and run inside.

Out at sea there are two extra ways to do this. A relief ship is anchored halfway out on every mission: land on its deck pad to drop chimps off and get patched up, just like at the hut. And from Castaways on, you carry a rope ladder: hover low and still over chimps on a crate or buoy you can't land on, and they climb up to you.

Health and crashes

Your health pips are at the top left. Each net that hits you costs one. So do hard landings, bumping walls, and dipping into water. Power lines, lava, lava spray, falling rocks, gas flares, lightning and helicopter blades cost one too.
Lose all four and the gyrocopter crashes. Chimps aboard bail out on parachutes and wait where they land to be picked up again.
You have three gyrocopters per mission. Landing at base (or on the relief ship) repairs you, and poachers leave you alone there.

The Jungle

Jeeps fire nets up at you but can't aim straight up. Get right above one and drop a coconut. Jeeps also grab loose chimps and take them back to their cages. Bonk the jeep to free them.
Ultralights arrive after a warning beep and a red arrow at the screen's edge. Turn to face them and fling a coconut.
Net drones drift slowly toward you. One coconut pops them.
Low canopy: coconuts dropped from above splat on the leaves. Fly in low from the open side and fling.
Wind pushes you, your coconuts and parachutes. Watch the windsock and the blowing leaves.
Night: your searchlight shows the way, and the map only shows poachers close by.
The blimp (Poacher Camp) drops nets on anything below it. Coconuts bounce off the balloon. Fling at its two engines from the side, then fly above it and drop onto the valve on top. Its cage of chimps floats down when it's beaten.

Harbour Town

Container stacks: narrow ledges at many heights. Check which stack the chimps are on.
Crane hooks: coconuts just clang off a hanging cage. Hit the red latch on the cable and the cage floats down.
The overpass: vans drive on top as well as below. A van up top can't shoot through the deck at you.
Rooftop launchers fire straight along one lane of sky, shown as a faint dashed line. When one blinks, get out of its lane, or drop a coconut on it to knock it out for a while.
Power lines cost a hit. Find a gap to land in; the chimps will run to you.
Gusty gaps: calm beside the towers, a hard shove in the gaps between them. The streaks show where.
Flatcars carry cages along a track. Land on the car, easiest while it waits at the end.
Searchlights: if a beam catches you, every launcher reloads faster for a while. A coconut puts a lamp out.
The helicopter (The Freighter): fling at its tail rotor from behind, then climb above it and drop onto its rotor hub. Breaking its winch drops its cage early. Keep clear of its blades.

Smugglers' Island

Crumbling ledges only hold you for a few seconds in all. They crack as they wear, and when one gives way anyone on it floats down on a chute.
Steam vents: wisps mean a blast is coming. It throws you upward, hard, and into any rock above. Don't land on a vent.
Speedboats net you from the water, but never grab chimps. A cage may ride a motor raft: land on the raft while it waits at the end.
Lava costs a hit and bounces you up. Fountains bubble first, then spit a spray of lava.
Net mortars lob slow shells. A shrinking ring shows where each will come down, so don't be there. They won't fire at you when you're right over them, and a coconut knocks one out.
Lava tubes are dark inside, with low roofs. Fly in low from the open end and mind the stalactites.
Rope bridges: you can't land on a bridge or a rock pinnacle, but the chimps walk across to you.
Ash fall: a shadow on the ground shows where each rock will land. Move! Rocks bonk buggies too.
The submarine (The Submarine): fling at its periscope any time, even when it's under water. When it surfaces, drop onto its launcher and its hatch. Each part you break sends it into a crash dive, so wait for it to come up again. It can't fire at you when you're right over its launcher.

The Smugglers' Fleet

The swell: the sea rises and falls, and every deck with it. Time your landings.
The trawler never stops. Match its speed, then settle onto the deck.
Castaways: chimps on drifting crates and buoys. You can't land on those, so hover low and still and let down the rope ladder.
Pelicans swallow dropped coconuts. Fling one at them to chase them off, or drop when they're not looking.
The rig: gas flares sputter, then burn sideways off the deck edges. Cross when they're quiet.
Waterspouts wander the sea. Fly into one and it carries you up and flings you out.
The wreck is going down. Get the chimps off before the decks go under, or they'll have to swim for it.
Storm night: a glow shows where lightning will strike. It hits the tallest thing there, so stay lower than a mast.
The flying boat (The Flying Boat): while it taxis on the water, drop onto its engine and its tail. With the engine gone it can't take off. Then meet it head-on and fling at the cockpit. Keep clear when it flies. Its crew throw the cage overboard when it's beaten, and it floats ashore.

Tip: flying low creates a strong downdraft that pushes nets away.

The screen

Top bar: health, spare gyrocopters, wind (on windy missions), chimps aboard, and chimps home. During a boss fight, a bar underneath shows its weak points and how many hits each has left.
Map strip: the whole mission. Cages show how many chimps are still inside; red marks are threats; yellow pads are places to drop chimps off; the box is what you can see.

Missions and stars

There are 36 missions in four chapters of nine: The Jungle, Harbour Town, Smugglers' Island and The Smugglers' Fleet. Each mission adds one new thing, and each chapter ends with a boss. Earn one star for getting everyone home, two for doing it without losing a gyrocopter, and three for also beating the par time. Each mission unlocks the next, and finishing a chapter's boss opens the next chapter. The mission list shows one chapter at a time; tap the tabs to switch.

Contact: Feel free to contact us with any bugs, complaints, or requests.

Release Date: September 23, 2026

History

In May 1982, a programmer named Dan Gorlin released a game for the Apple II called Choplifter. It started life as a helicopter flight simulator, all about how a chopper tilts, drifts and hovers. Then, as the story goes, a local teenager took a look and suggested it needed some people to pick up. Gorlin went off to study Williams' arcade hit Defender, where you protect little humans from being carried away, and turned his simulator into a rescue mission.

The game Brøderbund published asked for something unusual at the time. You weren't there to rack up points. Sixty-four hostages waited in barracks behind enemy lines, and your job was to fly out, land beside them, let them climb aboard (sixteen at most), and ferry them home while dodging tanks on the ground and jets in the sky. Your result was simply how many people you saved. The helicopter could face left, face right, or turn toward you, and the way it faced changed how it fired. Players loved it: it sold 9,000 copies within weeks, and Billboard named it computer game of the year.

From home computers to the arcade and back

Choplifter soon reached almost every home machine of the era, including Atari computers, the Commodore 64 and the ColecoVision. Then it did something rare: in 1985 Sega turned it into an arcade game, taking a home computer hit into the arcades instead of the other way round. Versions for the NES and the Sega Master System followed, then sequels on the Game Boy and Game Gear in the early 1990s. In 2012 inXile Entertainment brought the idea back as Choplifter HD for modern consoles and PC.

A family of rescuers

The idea of flying out to save people stuck around. When Electronic Arts began work on Desert Strike (1992), EA's president Trip Hawkins suggested the designers make something like Choplifter, because flying a helicopter and rescuing people was cool. The Strike series moved to a tilted overhead view and much bigger battlefields, but rescuing prisoners stayed part of the job. Sega came back to the theme the same year with Air Rescue, an arcade game played from the cockpit, whose Master System version scrolled from side to side much like the original.

What Chimp Lift keeps, and what it changes

Chimp Lift is our tribute to that family, rebuilt for a phone held upright. The heart of it is the same: fly out, open the cages, land close by so the chimps can scramble aboard, and ferry them home a basketful at a time. The three-way facing is back too. Face the camera and your coconuts drop straight down; face a side and they're flung forward.

Everything else got the Cheery Chimp treatment. The helicopter is now a coconut-shell gyrocopter with a goggled chimp at the controls. There are no guns: coconuts crack open cages and bonk poachers' jeeps. The jets became poacher ultralights, joined by slow net drones and, in the final mission, a poacher blimp. The poachers fire nets, not bullets, and if your gyrocopter goes down, your passengers bail out on banana-leaf parachutes. Instead of one long campaign there are nine short missions, each adding one new twist: iron cages, low jungle canopy, gusty wind, a night raid.

Chimp Lift is an original game inspired by Choplifter. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the creators or rights holders of Choplifter or any other game mentioned here. All names belong to their respective owners.

Behind the Scenes

Chimp Lift: fly out, crack the cages, bring them home

There's a new game on Cheery Chimp. In Chimp Lift you fly a coconut-shell gyrocopter to rescue chimps that poachers have locked in cages. Drop a coconut to break a cage open, land nearby, and the chimps scramble into your basket. Then fly them home, eight at a time, while the poachers do their best to net you out of the sky. The chase starts in the jungle and ends far out at sea: 36 missions in four chapters.

If you played computers in the early '80s, the idea may feel familiar. Chimp Lift is my tribute to Dan Gorlin's 1982 classic Choplifter, one of the first games where the goal was to save people rather than score points. (There's a short history of it on the game's page.) I wanted that same feeling on a phone held upright, with chimps.

Built for a phone in your hand

The first problem was the screen. Side-scrolling rescue games are wide, and phones are tall. Chimp Lift uses a square window on the action at the top of the screen, with a strip map underneath that shows the whole mission at a glance: every cage and how many chimps are still inside, every threat, every place you can drop chimps off, and where you are. Everything below that belongs to your thumbs.

The flight stick floats. Put your thumb down anywhere in the stick area and that spot becomes the centre, so you never have to hunt for it. The big coconut button sits on the other side; tap to drop one, hold to keep them coming. Left-handed? Swap sides in Settings. On a computer, the arrow keys and space bar work too. Pause from the Cheery Chimp bar and you get a menu to resume, restart the mission or pick another.

Which way you face matters

The rule I kept from the original is the heart of the game. Fly left or right and your gyrocopter faces that way, and coconuts are flung forward. Hover for a moment and it turns to face you, and coconuts drop straight down. Dropping is how you break cages and bonk jeeps from above. Flinging is how you knock ultralights out of the air, hit cages tucked under a roof, and take on a boss head-on. It takes about one mission before you're doing it without thinking.

Nets, not guns

Nobody in Chimp Lift has guns. The poachers throw nets, and each net that hits you costs a piece of your health. Take four and your gyrocopter goes down, and any chimps aboard bail out on banana-leaf parachutes and wait where they land for your next gyrocopter. Setting down at base patches you up.

Four chapters, one new idea per mission

Every mission adds exactly one new thing, and every chapter ends with a boss that carries a cage of chimps.

The Jungle. It starts on a quiet Practice Field, then brings in jeeps that fire nets but can't aim straight up, ultralights that swoop in from the edge of the screen, net drones, iron cages that take two coconuts, a low canopy you have to fly under, a gusty gorge, and a night raid lit only by your searchlight. The boss is the poachers' blimp: fling at its engines from the side, then climb above it and drop onto the valve on top.

Harbour Town. The chimps that are left get shipped downriver to a smugglers' port. You get stacked shipping containers, cages hanging from crane hooks (hit the latch, not the cage), a two-level overpass with vans on top, rooftop launchers that fire straight along one lane of sky, power lines, gusty gaps between tall towers, cages riding flatcars in a rail yard, and searchlights that raise the alarm. The boss is a cargo helicopter over the smugglers' freighter: get behind it for the tail rotor, then above it for the rotor hub.

Smugglers' Island. The smugglers run for their volcano island: black sand, basalt, steam and lava. Ledges crumble if you sit on them too long, steam vents blast you skyward, speedboats patrol the lagoon, lava fountains spit, and net mortars lob slow shells with a ring showing where each will land. There are dark lava tubes to fly through, rope bridges the chimps can cross but you can't land on, and an ash fall where each rock's shadow warns you to move. The boss is a submarine that tows its cage on a raft. Fling at its periscope, even when it's under water. When it surfaces, drop on its launcher and hatch before it crash-dives again.

The Smugglers' Fleet. The last smugglers take to the sea, and the sea itself joins in. The swell lifts and drops every deck. There's a trawler that never stops, pelicans that swallow your dropped coconuts, an oil rig with gas flares that burn sideways, wandering waterspouts, a wreck slowly going under, and a storm night where lightning strikes the tallest thing around. The boss is a flying boat. Bomb its engine and tail while it taxis, meet it head-on for the cockpit, and stay out of its way when it's in the air.

Out at sea there's no ground, so this chapter needed two new tricks. A relief ship is anchored halfway out on every mission, a second place to drop chimps off and get patched up. And you carry a rope ladder now: hover low and still over chimps on a drifting crate and they climb up to you.

Stars and par times

Each mission gives up to three stars: one for getting every chimp home, two for doing it without losing a gyrocopter, and three for also beating the par time. Beat a mission to unlock the next, and beat a chapter's boss to open the next chapter.

A little test pilot helped here. It's a scripted player that flies every mission over and over, and its times set the par for each one, with some slack because it never gets nervous. The pilot has perfect reflexes but takes clumsy routes, so a good human should be able to beat par on every mission. It has to win all 36 missions every time before I call a change done.

Some things you might not notice

Rotor wash. Fly low and your downdraft flattens the grass, kicks up dust, and spreads rings across the water. It also pushes nets away, so hovering low over a jeep is safer than it looks.
Chimps are smart about landings. Hover low over a group and they bunch up underneath, ready to board. Land right on top of them and they'll scatter out from under your skids, which costs you time.
The music is made in code. Like the sound effects, there are no audio files. Each chapter plays the same bouncy tune on its own instrument: marimba and pan flute in the jungle, steel pan in Harbour Town, ukulele on the island, and a concertina at sea. A brassier track takes over whenever a boss is fighting. The drums drop out when you land and come back when you take off.
It remembers where you were. Close the page mid-mission and Chimp Lift picks up right where you left off, paused, until you tap Resume.

A few tips

Before you land, check which ledge, rooftop or boat the cage is on. Chimps won't cross from one surface to another, so a cage on a cliff means landing on the cliff.
Don't fill the basket and then go looking for trouble. A full basket makes you slower, and a crash means the whole basket bails out on chutes.
When the warning beeps, stop what you're doing and face the ultralight. Whoever fires first wins.
Most dangers warn you first: a blinking launcher, wisps from a vent, a bubbling fountain, a ring where a shell will land, a shadow under a falling rock, a glow before lightning. Learn the warnings and you'll rarely get hit.
At sea, use the relief ship. The trip home is long, and the ship is halfway.