Flappy Bird was one of those bizarre, almost inexplicable phenomena and it just won’t… go… away.
Even after the game’s creator took the game off the App Store, the clones and spinoffs just keep coming. According to a new Pocket Gamer report, 60 new Flappy Bird clones hit Apple’s App Store between February 28 and March 3. That’s 2.5 new clones per hour, or one every 24 minutes. That’s just plain ridiculous.
If you’re wondering what qualifies as a clone, the game has to have players guiding characters of some kind through a series of pipes – or pipe-like objects – hanging from the ceiling or sticking up from the ground. We’ve heard of the Sesame Street-inspired spinoff, Flappy Bert, and one of the new clones is called Fall Out Bird (obviously based on the band, Fall Out Boy).
Flappy Bird garnered over 50 million downloads before creator Dong Nguyen yanked it, on the grounds that the game was “too addictive.” Yeah, well, he probably wasn’t wrong.
Fads just don’t die as quickly as they used to
I really expected this to disappear in a matter of days. It was a flash in the pan, nothing more. And yet, all these clones and spinoffs continue to flow, which means that everyone is still champing at the bit for more poorly presented Flappy Bird “fun.” I never understood how the game was entertaining the first place, but that’s just because I’m not a masochist.
