Remember that stupid $#@!ing mobile game Flappy Bird? This other game is just like that!
%#@! this stupid $#@!ing game right in the %#@!ing honey pot
WHAT FLAPPY GIVES, FLAPPY FLAPS
After a much-heralded debut and equally infamous disappearance, Flappy Bird the mobile game ruined lives at a faster clip than Arnold Schwarzenegger broke necks in an 80s action movie.
FLAPPY BIRD SPAWNED COUNTLESS FLAPPY CLONES
There are so many clones of Flappy Bird that we should all feel a little scared. We barely escaped the mobile app landscape turning into Flappy Bird: Dominion for a minute there. And even then, the threat never really disappears.
From penguins, to blowfish, to Mario himself (WTF?!), the mobile app that once racked up $50k a day is the flappy goose that keeps laying eggs.
I just hope Pewdiepie got his cut.
But the best Flappy Bird variant of them all doesn’t so much flap as…well…buzz.
When he’s trying to get honey, anyway.
WTF INSPIRED THIS MADNESS? IT FEELS…FAMILIAR
As early as 2014, French media speculated that Flappy Bird (2012) was based off the smash hit mobile app Piou Piou (2011). The similarities are as striking as those green Mario-esque pipes sending you into an existential crisis because you realize as bad as those hit detection boxes are, the ones in real life are even worse.
But in a rare interview with the creator Dong Nguyen, players learned that “the gameplay was inspired by the act of bouncing a ping pong ball against a paddle for as long as possible.” But it wasn’t just the simplicity of the experience that made the game addictive to anyone who dared play it.
Uncharted game designer Rich Lemarchand, who also gave a talk at Gamelab, suggested to Nguyen that perhaps the popularity of Flappy Birds, particularly among teens, was driven by the same sort of things that made punk and new age bands cool for teens: It excludes adults.
“It seems that because of the intense difficulty of the game it is something only young teens can like,” he said.
The appeal of the game came in part from its simplicity, but it wasn’t necessarily the simplicity of the EXPERIENCE. The game functioned as a deceptively simple MECHANISM to immerse ourselves back in the frantic pace of childhood.
And what part of childhood was more frantic than a bear’s rumbly tumbly in the mood for food?
WINNIE THE JUMPING POOH ADVENTURE (Android 2017)
Please for the love of gaud don’t search for this game. Not by title, not by concept. It’s not in the Play store. It’s not in the Apple store. The APKs are out there, but I think those honey pots have gone sour!!
Having said that…look at this game.
It’s like Winnie the Pooh got lost in a honey pot, scooped honey with one hand while he played Bejeweled with the other, and eventually the three merged into this virus-ridden Flappy Bird Voltron I still kinda want to play.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I don’t have anything else to say about the game. I mean it when I say I’m not brave enough to download the APK. Video evidence of the game is sparse. A part of me wants to believe it might not even exist.
But that’s just the detective in me worrying I’ve been outsmarted. The solution to these mysteries is always deceptively simple.
They fail because they can’t maintain the accuracy. It’s not my design. — Dan Nguyen, creator of Flappy Bird
I daresay it’s not accuracy, Mr. Nguyen. Not for me, anyway.
Sometimes, I just already know when I’m beat.
THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)
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