Apropos of nothing Flappy Bird floated across my mind today. It struck me odd how little people seem to refer to it now, given how popular it got. I was reading its Wikipedia page; the game was pulling in $50k USD a day and the dev pulled it because he thought it was too addictive. Or possibly because he didn’t feel like he could defend against the claims that he’d ripped off other games and got in over his head. It’s a fascinating story.

But the game itself I never got into. I tried it once on a friend’s phone and quickly had no more interest in playing it. I’m curious to know from people who played it a lot at the time, was it a good game? Does it hold up? Or was it a relatively generic knock-off that got famous because catapulting random ideas into the global consciousness is just a thing the internet does sometimes?

  • yamper@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    24 hours ago

    yes, i think flappy bird had a really elegant onboarding/tutorial:

    1. main menu screen, tap to start
    2. the tap flaps the bird
    3. you fall to the ground, learning that you need to repeatedly tap to fly
    4. before any obstacles appear, you get some time to calibrate your rhythm
    5. obstacles start appearing and the game starts
    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      That’s a good point, I too think it nailed one of the requirements of “simple” single-mechanic games, which is getting the player up to speed and into the fun part as quickly as possible.