The extinction of 'Flappy Bird': the rise and fall of a frustratingly simple mobile game

Flappy Bird was a hard game. My high score was eight, and it took a long time to get even that far. When I saw people get scores in the dozens, or even hundreds, I was in awe. That brutal challenge is part of what made the game so infamously addictive, but the follow-up from creator Dong Nguyen might just be a step too far. So far my high score in Swing Copters is one. And I don't see that changing any time soon.

Both aesthetically and mechanically, Swing Copters is a lot like Flappy Bird. The visuals are low-fi pixel art, and you're once again controlling a tiny dude trying to fly past a never-ending barrage of obstacles. Only this time, the pixelated star is wearing a helicopter hat, and he flies up instead of to the right. The one-touch gameplay has you controlling his direction to ensure he doesn't spin out of control.

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen is moving beyond the feathered friend that brought him massive recognition — he just announced on Twitter that he's building a new game and attached a screenshot to go along with it. There's no other detail on the game yet aside from a small helmeted human being jumping through a small opening into what appears to be a building — it's not all that dissimilar to what you need to do in Flappy Bird, in fact. Polygon notes that Nguyen described the game as "some guy jumping from building to building" in an interview on CNBC.

The timing of this reveal is rather surprising — just yesterday, Nguyen said that Flappy Bird would be back in August, but in today's tweet, he said that he wanted people to "forget about Flappy Bird for a while." When we'll see this new project remains to be seen, but we're guessing from Nguyen's tweet that it'll be ready to go before Flappy Bird returns.

The creator of the gaming sensation Flappy Bird now says he is bringing the game back. In an interview with CNBC, Dong Nguyen said the new version would be a multiplayer game that is "less addictive" than its predecessor. Nguyen famously pulled the game from app stores amid worries that the game's millions of fans were spending too much time playing the game.

Flappy Bird, which asks players to navigate a blob-like animal through a fiendishly challenging series of green pipes, became a sensation earlier this year. Its legend only grew when Nguyen removed it from app stores, leading to an army of clones that dominated the charts for weeks. On CNBC today, Nguyen said the original game has been downloaded more than 50 million times. The resurrected Flappy Bird will be ready in August, Nguyen said.

It's been just over a month since the creator of the surprisingly popular and exceedingly frustrating mobile game Flappy Bird pulled his creation from the App Store and Google Play. He's kept a fairly low profile since, but Dong Nguyen broke his silence in a big way in a just-published feature interview with Rolling Stone. In the profile, Nguyen reveals that he's "considering" bringing Flappy Bird back, despite the overwhelming crush of attention, criticism, and even threats that the game originally brought him. However, if he does bring the game back, Nguyen says it'll come with a warning imploring players to take a break; last month, the developer said that the game's addictive qualities were a big part of why he took the game down.

Beyond the tease of a Flappy Bird return, Nguyen also talked extensively about the inspiration for his game and how the culture of his home city of Hanoi influenced the game's simple mechanics. Citizens rush through the city, eyes trained on their phones — and thus the simple "tap" control made a lot of sense to Nguyen. And as for the low scores that plague most players, Nguyen apparently was influenced by "one of the most masocore analog creations ever: paddleball." For the whole story on Nguyen and 2014's surprise breakout hit, read on at Rolling Stone.

The wildly simple yet infinitely frustrating game Flappy Bird is no more, though it continues to live on in countless clones. Now Code.org, the non-profit aimed at teaching people how to write code, has created a tool to make your own Flappy Bird game while learning some code at the same time.

In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, an army of clones has risen up to take its place — but Apple and Google may now be preventing that from happening. Currently when you search "flappy" in Google Play or the App Store, you'll see game like Flappy Fish, Flappy Pig, or Splashy Fish pop up. However, several developers are reporting that both Apple and Google have since clamped down on obvious clones, disallowing games that are clearly built to cash in on Flappy Bird's sudden burst of popularity.

Flappy Bird is gone. The mobile gaming sensation was pulled from both the iTunes App Store and Google Play by creator Dong Nguyen, but in its place an army of clones has arrived. A quick search for "flappy bird" in the App Store, for example, brings up names like Splashy Fish, Fly Birdie, City Bird, and Flying Flappy Unicorn Bird.

Most of these games are simply reskinned versions looking to capitalize on the surprising popularity of Flappy Bird, letting you play the same exact game, only with characters like doge or a piece of poo in place of the bird. Soon you'll even be able to play as members of the band Fall Out Boy, and the developers behind games like Super Hexagon and Canabalt have made their own homages. But there are plenty of other games that take Flappy Bird's simple concept and reinvent it in intriguing new ways. Here are some of the best.

Mobile gaming sensation Flappy Bird may be gone, but you can still get the same experience with a little help from doge. Flappy Doge is a browser game that both looks and plays exactly like Flappy Bird, except instead of a one-eyed bird, you're controlling an adorable, pixelated shiba. It's just as hard as the mobile game, and doesn't include any ads to interfere with the experience. In fact it's totally free to play — you won't need to spend a single dogecoin. Check it out at the source link below.

The notoriously difficult Flappy Bird was created in mid-2013, but it only gained recognition over the past weeks as a sudden rise in popularity brought it to the top of both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. It's received both genuine and backhanded praise for its simple design, which asks players to simply navigate between pair after pair of pipes without hitting either one. Just a few days ago, Nguyen told The Verge that he was thinking about a sequel, so this is a sudden turn of events.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect that Flappy Birds was removed from Google Play and the iOS App Store on Sunday and that Nintendo denied sending any formal complaints about similarities to the game and the Mario series.