Flappy Bird clones appear: wanna switch a bird for a flying pig?
Flappy Bird has been out for less than a week on Android and it has already gone viral with over ten million downloads. The premise is simple: tap to flap your bird's wings and pass endless pipe obstacles. That's it. But it's not easy. The game's instantaneous popularity has already spawned a few clones, from substituting the bird for a flying pig to a fake score screen that asks users to pay for it: with the word ''fake'' in the app's title! Check out the best clones we've seen.
Clumsy Bird
The first entrant is not even really a clone, because Clumsy Bird came out on Android the day before Flappy Bird (which was, of course, already on iOS), and it brings much better graphics than the Flappy Bird ''original''. It's kind of an Angry Birds-meets-Flappy Bird mashup. In this hybrid, dragons have stolen the Clumsy Bird's eggs and then it's all Flappy Bird gameplay as you manouver between tree trunks to recover the eggs. I'll give them points for Frankensteining the two most popular bird games on Android right now.
Tappy Bird
The next clone is a basic reproduction of Flappy Bird called Tappy Bird by a Google ''Top Developer'' by the name of Androidslide, the dev responsible for Camera Zoom FX. It looks rushed and, incredibly, seems to have even worse graphics than the original Flappy Bird. Not that the original Flappy Bird was original anyway – I seem to remember those pipes from somewhere else and there's something very Helicopter-like about it too. Still, fans of the ''original'' seem a bit upset that Flappy Bird has been cloned so directly.
Fake Flappy Bird
I wonder how those fans feel about being asked to pay for a clone of Flappy Bird's score screen called Fake Flappy Bird. It seems pretty obvious that it's a waste of money to most, but several hundred users have actually paid to install an app with the very word ''fake'' in the title - just to trick your friends into thinking you scored 722 points. I'd like to say ''bad developer!'' but there's a market for everything. This app is not actually a game though, so be warned.
Flappy Tappy
If the straight-up cloning of Flappy Bird isn't enough to warrant a chuckle from you then this last one surely will: how about we substitute the pixelated bird with lips for a pig's head with ear-wings? Sure, why not! In all fairness, at least this clone has swapped out the Super Mario pipes for ''cliffs'' and added an extra layer of humor to it. I imagine the original developers that ported Flappy Bird to Android, GEARS Studio, must have said ''when pigs fly'' at least once during the development of the game, so this seems kind of fitting, and is actually kinda fun.
And if you don't want to mess with all those clones and missed out on the original Flappy Bird wave, here's where you can grab it for realz:
What's your highest score on Flappy Bird? Have you tried any of the clones yet?
What do you think about this clone?
I don't think this popularity will last long though.. I give it another month :p
I don't have enough time to waste on such games, I guess. It's crazy how popular Flappy Bird has become!
I'm not even sold on the original game, let alone the clones.
73 cents to trick my friends? Umm no.