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Tag: flappy bird

  • Flappy Bird Creator Returns with Another Impossible Game

    Flappy Bird Creator Returns with Another Impossible Game

    Dong Nguyen, the guy who created one of the most addictive and polarizing mobile games in recent memory and then yanked it out from under everyone, has just launched his follow up effort.

    Swing Copters is now available on iOS and Android, and it borrows some of the same look and feel of Nguyen’s crack-like offering, Flappy Bird.

    Swing Copters is a lot like Flappy Bird, in that you must tap on your screen to control a rather hard-to-control character, guiding it through gates without touching the sides. While the motion in Flappy Bird moves side to side and your taps make the character fly up or down, Swing Copters scrolls vertically and your taps affect the little guy’s horizontal motion.

    I sucked at Flappy Bird and I also suck at Swing Copters. Like its predecessor, Swing Copter is kind of tough to get the hang of.

    Let’s be real – Swing Copters is nearly impossible. Like Flappy Bird, there is a very steep learning curve.

    But will it prove to be as addictive as Flappy Bird? When Nguyen yanked Flappy Bird from the App Store earlier this year, he said that its “addictiveness” was one of the reasons he decided to pull the plug – even though he was reportedly raking in upwards of $50,000 a day in revenue (thanks to in-game ads).

    In May, Nguyen said he would bring back Flappy Bird, with multiplayer, in August. Well, it’s August and instead we have a new, Flappy Bird-esque game. Go play it now, but don’t expect to feel anything but frustration.

    Image via Swing Copters, iTunes

  • Orange Is The New Black Meets Flappy Bird for Wonderful Time-Waster

    Orange Is The New Black Meets Flappy Bird for Wonderful Time-Waster

    Today, Netflix dropped an entire new season of their hit show Orange Is The New Black in our laps – 13 episodes ready to stream whenever you’re ready.

    Here’s the thing – most of us are at work. Damn.

    While you might not be committed to watching entire episodes of television in order to shirk whatever responsibilities you have at work, you may be willing to play a little OITNB-inspired game to pass the time?

    If you want to neglect your duties, Netflix has made an addictive little time-waster called Feisty Chicken. You can play it here.

    Feisty Chicken is a complete Flappy Bird clone, except the flappy bird has been replaced with that infamous chicken. You know the one. You must weave the chicken through gaps in a prison wall via careful clicks of your mouse. It’s hard, and addictive – just like the game on which it is based.

    Image via Netflix, Feisty Chicken

  • Flappy Bird Returning in August with Multiplayer

    As 2014 was just beginning, a new craze was taking over the smartphone-using world. It was a simple, addictive, yet highly difficult little game called Flappy Bird. It became such a sensation that its creator, Dong Nguyen, decided he “just couldn’t take it anymore” and decided to pull it from the App Store. Near riots ensued (or as close as you can get on the internet), and people demanded that he put it back up for download.

    About a month passed, and Nguyen tweeted that he would bring back Flappy Bird–but not soon.

    Now, he has confirmed to CNBC’s Kelly Evans that August is the date, and when it comes back he’d like it to have multiplayer.

    Also, he says that he wants to make it “less addictive,” as people’s level of obsession was apparently one of the reasons he decided to pull the plug back in February–even though he claimed he was raking in upwards of $50,000 a day in revenue.

    Prepare yourselves for a whole new round of crippling frustration.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Flappy Bird App to Return, but ‘Not Soon’

    Flappy Bird App to Return, but ‘Not Soon’

    Flappy Birds creator Dong Nguyen confirmed via Twitter Wednesday that the now defunct app will be back, but “not soon,” only once he is finished working on it.

    Nguyen, the 29-year-old Vietnamese independent developer behind the popular yet difficult game, used Twitter last month to announce he would be removing Flappy Bird from app stores last month, citing death threats and fear it was ruining lives. He used the platform again to confirm the app would be back.

    One of Nguyen’s 170,000 Twitter followers asked him yesterday if the game would be returning to the Apple iTunes App store, and Nguyen confirmed that it would.

    Originally released last May, Flappy Bird only surged in popularity around December, and became the most downloaded app in both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store for Android devices.

    Nguyen claimed he was at one point making $50,000 a day in ad revenue from Flappy Bird.

    When Flappy Bird was pulled from app stores, it had an average four-star rating from more than 543,000 reviews in the Apple App Store and 228,000 on Android. Many of the reviews were lengthy, tongue-in-cheek tales of time lost, marriages ended and people going nuts after playing the game.

    At the time, Nguyen said he was afraid that what he’d intended to be a simple pastime had gotten out of control and become “addictive” to some users.

    People who downloaded the game did not lose it, but those who had not were out of luck.

    Until Flappy Bird is back, Nguyen’s studio Dot Gears has two other games available for download, Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block. There are also multiple clone apps of Flappy Bird available that continue to flood app stores.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Flappy Bird Is Coming Back, Says Developer

    Wednesday, when asked on Twitter whether he’d ever put Flappy Bird back in the App Store, the games creator Dong Nguyen responded with the answer that many former addicts wanted to hear: Yes.

    Of course, this all rests on Nguyen and him, you know, not lying and stuff–but as far as straight from the horse’s mouth, you can’t get any clearer than an unequivocal “yes.”

    But not soon. Nguyen has continued to answer Twitter users’ questions this afternoon, but made no additional reference to Flappy Bird. It does look like he has at least one other game in the pipeline.

    Earlier this year, it was nearly impossible to avoid the Flappy Bird phenomenon. A seemingly basic, even comically stripped down game took over people’s lives. It was addicting, not to mention difficult as all hell. The popularity of the game clearly took Nguyen by surprise, and he made the decision to pull the app from the App Store.

    People were pissed about it, and that’s the understatement of the year.

    “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore,” said Nguyen on February 8th. “It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.”

    But it looks like Nguyen has had a change of heart. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Flappy Bird was raking in $50,000 a day during the craze, according to some reports.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • ‘Flappy Bird’ Knockoff Apps Being Rejected by Apple

    After Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen announced he was pulling his addictive game from the Apple App Store and Google Play, which prompted reactions that varied from outraged to threatening, quite a few games have popped up that are very similar to Flappy Bird. Considering that Flappy Bird was bringing in $50,000 per day for Nguyen, it’s no surprise that others are trying to capitalize on the game’s success, but Apple is now rejecting games with the word “Flappy” in the title.

    If you searched for the word “flappy” in the Apple App Store a couple of weeks ago, you would have found quite a few games with the word “Flappy” in the title. Flappy Bee, Flappy Puppy, Flappy Rabbits and Flappy Plane are just a few of the games that would have popped up.

    The same search now doesn’t yield many results with “Flappy” in the name at all, and this is because Apple is now rejecting new apps that have the word “Flappy” in them. According to Tech Crunch, some developers have gotten a rejection notice from Apple for violating the App Store Review Guidelines with their submissions. Developer Ken Carpenter says that Apple rejected his game Flappy Dragon for the following reasons:

    22.2: Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected
    22.2 We found that your app, and/or its metadata, contains content that could be misleading to users, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
    We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app.

    This move is infuriating many developers. Check out tweets on the matter from Carpenter and mobile game developer Kuyi Mobile below.

    Carpenter certainly raises a point about Apple rejecting his game–how is it possible for these games to violate the rules since Flappy Bird doesn’t exist in the App Store anymore? Perhaps Apple should leave it up to Dong Nguyen to decide whether he wants to pursue litigation against the developers.

    Even if Apple is successful in getting rid of the games with “Flappy” in the title, don’t expect similar games to go away anytime soon. Many developers are now removing “Flappy” from their game names to get around the “Flappy” word ban (Flappy Bee was changed to Jumpy Bee). Splashy Fish is the number one free app in the Apple App Store, followed behind Flying Cyrus (no, it doesn’t have “Flappy” or an animal in the name, but the setup is similar and hilarious), and City Bird is in the number four spot.

    Image via Twitter

  • Flappy Bird Gets The NMA Treatment

    Flappy Bird Gets The NMA Treatment

    If you follow fads at all, you’re no doubt aware of the rise and fall of Flappy Bird. The simple, yet unfairly difficult, game has been the subject of much debate over the past few weeks. Critics and gamers have been going back and forth over whether or not it can even be considered a game while some have questioned the integrity of its creator.

    The creator, Dong Nguyen, had enough over the weekend and announced he would be pulling the game from both the iOS app store and Google Play on Sunday. It’s unclear why he pulled it only saying that he “cannot take this anymore.”

    After his statement, some speculated that he was under some legal pressure over his game featuring pipes that are of the same color and similar design to those found in Super Mario Bros. games. Nintendo and Nguyen have both dismissed that as a reason though.

    The most likely answer can be found in the fact that gamers (and people in general) can be the absolute worst. It’s no secret that Nguyen received death threats from trolls on a constant basis for his game being too difficult, but a new wave of abuse hit him when people began to accuse him of stealing assets from Nintendo games or using bots to inflate his position on the iOS app store.

    The same kind of pressure forced Phil Fish, creator of Fez, to leave the gaming industry. Nguyen won’t be giving up on game development, but he pulled Flappy Bird because of all the negative attention it brought him.

    As is customary, the Flappy Bird saga has now been immortalized by NMA. If you’re too lazy to read the sad story of a man who just wanted to make games, you should watch NMA’s humorous take on it instead:

    Image via Taiwanese Animators/YouTube

  • Flappy Bird Creator Threatened After Pulling Game

    Vietnam-based developer Nguyễn Hà Đông had achieved much success with his mobile game, Flappy Bird. In fact, according to The Verge, it was earning $50,000 per day.

    The side-scrolling game’s objective was to direct a flying bird, which moves continuously to the right, between each oncoming set of pipes without colliding with them. If it collides with the pipes, the game ends. Though simple, the game proved to be addicting to many.

    But, after less than 9 months in Google Play and the Apple App Store, Nguyen announced via Twitter that he would be removing the game.

    “I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now, I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore,” he tweeted on Sunday, adding that it has “nothing to do with legal issues.”

    His tweet was retweeted more than 141,000 times.

    Nguyen’s decision came from the controversy that spiked about the game. Rumors sparked over teens committing murder over high scores and accusations that the creator tricked the app store into giving it a high ranking.

    But, despite his hopes, the frenzy didn’t end when the creator pulled the popular game.

    One gamer even posted a picture of herself on Twitter with a gun in her mouth, saying, “@dongatory if you delete flappy bird I’ll kill myself.” She later posted that it was a joke.

    Since Sunday, Nguyen has continuously received harrassment and death threats.

    Rumors even surfaced that the 28-year old had in fact committed suicide. But this ended when he personally responded that he was fine.

    Devices with Flappy Bird installed are now selling for as much as $100,000 on eBay.

    Image via YouTube

  • Flappy Bird Has Now Come And Gone

    Recently, if you have been around a circle of friends who have iPhones or Android devices, you have probably heard them ranting about a game called “Flappy Bird,” an easily addictive but tough game that has just become a hot trend within the past few weeks. If you have downloaded the game on your smartphone, tablet, or iPod, you may want to consider keeping it, because the ability to download this game again no longer exists.

    According to The Los Angeles Times, the popular bird-flapping game is now off the app market and now unavailable to be downloaded from both the Apple App Store as well as the Google Play app website. If you are unsure of what “Flappy Bird” is about, I have provided a brief description from The Los Angeles Times below.

    “Users tap their smartphone screen to propel a bird through a series of gaps between green tubes, which look like the ones in the popular Mario Nintendo video games. If a user hits a tube, his character dies. The point of the game is to get the highest possible score, but “Flappy Bird” is notorious for its extreme level of difficulty. It’s possible to score 9,999, but getting even three points can be a challenge.”

    “Flappy Bird” was originally developed by the Vietnam-based developer Nguyen Ha Dong, and the game made its revenue through online advertising. Even with the game’s successful turnover ($50,000 per day), developer Dong announced on Saturday via Twitter that the game would be removed from the most-used app stores on Sunday(today).

    Many would think that the developer would be disabling the ability to download “Flappy Bird” because of some unknown legal issue; however, Dong did reassure the public on Twitter that there has not been any legal issues related to the game and that the game will not be sold to anyone or any company.

    The ability to not be able to download “Flappy Bird” has caused some crazy tweets:

    Image via YouTube (0:04)

  • Flappy Bird- Gone And Back Again

    Are you a fan of the difficult but fun app known as Flappy Bird? As of early this morning, Flappy Bird was no longer available to be downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

    The game has become increasingly popular over the last few weeks and was among the top games downloaded for both Apple and Android users. The game requires players to use their touch screens to direct their bird through the air and through an obstacle of tubes. If the bird hits a tube, it dies and the player loses a life.

    Players must try to score as many points as they can before their bird dies and although the game may sound simple, it is extremely hard. Players can rack up a score as high as 9,999, but most never make it to double digits. Oddly, the difficulty of the game is what has made it so popular.

    With such popularity, it is hard to understand why the game would be pulled. Developer Dong Nguyen announced his decision to take down the game in several tweets to fans. He did not reveal the reason behind his decision to remove the popular game, and many fans are demanding answers.

    After a backlash from fans, the developer seemed to quickly change his mind. He began tweeting that if he could get several different amounts of likes by the deadline, he would not remove the game. After removing it Sunday morning, he tweeted that he was working on bringing it back.

    Nguyen’s twitter ramblings have led many people to wonder what is going on with him. Was he simply taking the game down for the media attention? Did he only threaten to take it down to get more followers and downloads? Why was he so upset about his successful app?

    We may never know what happened to make Nguyen want to take down the app, but Flappy Bird fans can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their game will soon be back and available for download.

    Why do you think the Flappy Bird developer chose to remove the game and then bring it back a short time later?

    Image via YouTube.