Flappy Bird Application Game Review

Flappy Bird Application Game Review

The Revolution

            Flappy Bird has been a cultural hit in the United States since it was first released May 24, 2013 as a free downloadable game. It gained more and more popularity until it hit a record amount of downloads in early 2014. Odds are, you probably have played a similar game in the past, but for some reason this one really took off in the digital world. It was probably because of the levels of frustration that this simple game gave players.

Game Play

            Players these days are used to complicated and complex games that new technology has

Flappy Bird

offered these days. A breath of fresh air was found for non-gamers and ultimate gamers. The game is an automatic side scrolling game that causes the user to tap anywhere on the screen to get the bird to go up or fall down. When “flying”, the player must tap at a consistent and steady pace to keep the bird between small areas of tubing at the top and bottom of the screen. The space changes from top to bottom, so the player must be precise on their tapping skills.

Addictiveness

              The simplistic arcade style of this game opens up the audience range to almost nearly everyone. It requires skill that is acquired after practicing, but up until you have that skill it’s downright frustrating. Once you fail a level it’s so easy to just start another again, just hit the “Try Again” button and you’re hooked.

The Termination
              How is it so frustrating you ask? It’s just a tapping game? Well if you want to know the frustration it’s too late. The developer, Dong Nguyen, took it off all the app stores on February 8, 2014. He claims that it wasn’t because of legal issues, but he couldn’t take all the heat and rising popularity that was coming from the players. Some say it’s because it looks too much like any other Nintendo based game. In an interview Nguyen blames the addictiveness of the game for its cancellation. Buyers online were offering from $1,500-$90,000 for phones that already had the game installed before discontinue. Since the deletion of the game in app stores there have been many similar games that have come about, such as “Flappy Wings”, a game that is almost an exact replica of Flappy Birds.

Flappy Bird

Flappy Wings - Remake of Flappy Bird

Levels and Upgrades

              Most games these days have a certain amount of levels that a player works through in order to advance or complete the game. Does Flappy Bird? No, Sir. The only thing Flappy Bird has to offer is the “Try Again” button next to the amount of points you got during your last row, along with your best score. Placing these two numbers next to each other is really the kicker. They show the best you’ve done, along with what you’re currently doing. The closer you get to beating your top score the more you want to try to beat it. I’ve been there, in bed at night thinking “Okay I’ll just do about 10 tries and go to bed.” When in reality I end up playing for an hour because I keep getting 22 when my top score is 23. I end up getting frustrated with myself thinking, “TWO MORE, WHY CAN’T I GET JUST TWO MORE.”

              Along with not offering any more levels, Flappy bird also didn’t offer any upgrades. Some games these days offer upgrade for more levels or more lives to keep playing, although in order to get these you usually have to offer up some real-life dough. An example of this is the game Candy Crush Saga. There are hundreds of levels a player can go through, but after that certain levels can only be bought with a credit or debit card. But that’s not the only thing that they offer for a fee, they also offer more lives for the really addicted player. After failing a level so many times you run out of lives and they game ends for a particular amount of time. Some players are not patient enough to wait around to play again, so they buy more to feed their addiction.

Player Nostalgia

Frogger

              There’s something about this game that should bring people back to the era of the first digital games. Not many actions are required to the play the game, and the point of the game is familiarly simple, which is why I believe a lot of people play this game because of the nostalgia that it brings to them. Simple games are a lost genre these days; everything is way over-done and complicated. Humans react well the routine and something that they can easily relate back to.  Flabby Bird is related back to the games that were on Sega and Nintendo 64. A pretty similar game that I can think of is the ever so popular Frogger from Sega. It just takes a couple movements of the arrows to get the frog jump around the cars and get to his destination.
              Bringing adults back to their childhood can be as simple as making a game with one action required and a simple task. It hits a level to home that no Call of Duty or Snapchat can bring to them. Anyone with a touch enabled device that got to experience this game first hand knows exactly the different levels of emotion from failure to triumph when that personal best score is beat.