It was a piece of crap anyway that had been done before in crappy flash games that predate the iPhone itself.
Just because the gameplay was very simple doesn’t make it crap. The details (movement speed, the gap between the obstacles) were pretty much on point and that’s something that makes or breaks this kind of game.
Last but not least, it had little to none anti-user “features” that plague the modern games. I would choose Flappy Bird over most current games any time of the day. Actually there is no “would” in there as I still have it installed.
The mechanically identical predecessor games didn’t have any anti user elements either. The concept predates that too. If my family had enough money and modern day iffy parenting to give their barely highschool aged kid an iphone I probably could have made quite a chunk of money porting simple games I didn’t even come up with to the platform. I hated the ios interface back then too though from trying it when friends were showing off the new toy.
A large part of what made it crap to me both then and now is whatever causes my dislike of GTA even though I enjoyed 100%ing them up to san Andreas, of CoD even though MW2(original) had a special place in my blackened heart for being my first all achievements game, or any sports game other than SNES NHL 98.
I agree with the what you called the details of the game making or breaking it however. The Spider-Man formula just does it for me. Some I just vaguely recall as being fun like older Spider-Man titles, the hulk, prototype, watchdogs, etc., but I still absolutely love gravity rush/daze 1 and 2 as well as the recent Spider-Man games ported from PS. I spent a good chunk of time curled up in a ball, rolling around on the floor while playing gravity rush 1 on ps vita to up the immersion.
You’re not wrong, but it was also kind of a cultural moment and it’s weird that it was disappeared entirely. Most games like that have long tails of focus creep, neglect, crapware, or irrelevance, but Flappy Bird went out with a pop.
Unique concept? It was a clone of “Helicopter Game” that was from like 1990
I was coding Indie games when it came out. The number of clones in the community was just disgusting. There was even more than one Flappy Game Jam. If Flappy Bird can be credited with one thing, it’s that it made a whole bunch of inept coders think that they too could get rich by making super simple mobile games.
Shame the dev committed suicide because of so much hate from his game.
I remember when the game was pulled from the stores. Some assholes were selling their devices with flappy bird still installed for insane amounts of money.
The game is still up in some torrents and websites. Selling old ass phones the same as a new flagship just because it has a program in it that is still available in the internet is just retarded.
Because if you wanted the game that badly you could just get an $15 android and sideload it instead of buying a $100+ phone for $1000+
Sure, it is as easy as you’re saying. So what’s wrong with someone selling a device that is already configured with the game to people who don’t want to spend the effort to do it themselves? At the end of the day, people spent money that they felt was worthwhile to get a game that they enjoy. It’s the same as people selling Batocera cards on Ebay nowadays.
