Dong Nguyen returned from his temporary hiatus from mobile game development with the smash hit to-be, Swing Copters.
Swing Copters is claimed as the sequel to Nguyen’s Flappy Bird, the addictive mobile game that split households and ruined lives–including Nguyen’s own–earlier this year.
However, “spiritual successor” seems a more suitable description for the game. Sure, Copters features the same charming 8-bit artwork as its side-scrolling cousin, and the music and sound effects are similar if not slightly more entertaining and “cute.”
Courtesy of Swing-Copters.com
Heck, even the gameplay is conceptually similar. The goal is to get your sidespinning, rudder-bound, 8-bit blob through a vertical obstacle course laden with dangerous, swinging hammers threatening to knock off your rudder blades and send you down into an ultimately anti-climactic ground landing.
The game features the same peripheral advertisements as its predecessor, which some people find irritating but never bother me. Regardless, you can eliminate them with a measly $1.
Where this game differs from its overshadowing elder sibling is in its frustrating learning curve.
This game is difficult.
I was never phenomenal at Flappy Bird–before I deleted the game from my phone (yes, well after it was taken down from the App Store and likely worth hundreds of dollars), my high score was around 80 or something like that–but in the limited time that I’ve had to play Swing Copters, the best score I’ve gotten is a 1.99.
Alright, well “technically” 1.99 is not a legitimate score, but I was so darn close to clearing the second gap that I’m counting it. All jokes aside though, this game is difficult. “Copter Man,” or so I’m calling him, swings from side to side, and each screen tap sends him in the opposite direction. The admittedly accurate physics in the game make this far more difficult than it sounds.
That’s a dead Copter Man.
Because of momentum, letting Copter Man go one way for too long makes it all the more difficult to send him the other way, and with how fast his ascent is, coupled with the added obstacles, one mistake inevitably leads to a failed attempt, sending your little companion back to the start; do not collect $200.
For me this difficulty had the effect of tedium. I just got bored. While I don’t expect the game to lift off like its predecessor did, I can appreciate Nguyen’s attempts to make an altogether more polished game.
With that said, I leave the evaluations to you. Like Flappy Bird, the game is absolutely free, minus the $1 expenditure to eliminate irritating advertisements. It’s available on iOS and Android, and it’s waiting for you right now!
