The crazy story of Flappy Bird + alternatives

Was it so addictive, it had to be removed from the App Store? Did it frustrate gamers too much? Was the maker overwhelmed by all the attention? 7.5 years ago the world changed. The mobile game Flappy Bird came out and everybody talked about it. Here’s why.

When someone says ‘overnight success’, we immediately think of Flappy Bird. A simple mobile game that took the world by storm. Not just our world, but the world of maker Dong Nguyen as well. In fact, its popularity was weighing so heavy on his heart, he decided to delete Flappy Bird from the app stores, though it could have made him a very rich man.

The Vietnamese game artist developed Flappy Bird under his studio dotGears. It only took him a few days to create a game with a bird flying through Super Mario-like pipes. The bird does not enter them though: it just needs to flap its wings in order for him to not fly into any of them. Sounds easy, but it is quite the task. Flappy Bird is not exactly a condor, spreading its wings to soar through the air. It is more like a chicken were to fly. It really needs every flap of its wings to even remotely stay in the air. Fun fact: the bird in Flappy Bird is actually called Faby.

Dong did not need to spend any money on advertising this game. The fact that it looks so simple and cute, while being so crazy difficult is what got people to not just like it, but talk about it a lot too. The game came out in May 2013, but it was not until early 2014 that Flappy Bird rose to its throne, with YouTuber PewDiePie to thank for it as he reviewed it in one of his videos. Many people thought the game looked too similar to Mario, while being too difficult, but others immediately got what Flappy Bird was about. And: it was highly addictive. As you keep on failing, you keep on wanting to do it right again and again. 

Dong was earning great deals of money: Flappy Bird was the most downloaded free game in the iOS app store and the developer was making approximately 50.000 dollars a day from just this game. However, he decided to remove the game from the app stores on February 10th 2014. The reason for it was guilt: he did not feel okay for people to get so addicted to it. 

There are still phones out there that offer Flappy Bird, though they get more rare over the years. If you have downloaded the game before February 10th 2014 and you still have it on your phone, you could be holding a gold mine. People are willing to spend a lot of money on this extraordinary piece of video game history. However, if you just want to play a game like Flappy Bird, there are many alternatives. Flappy Bird is one of the most cloned games of all time in the App Store. Over 60 clones a day showed up in the app store at one time, some of them including malware, but only on alternative app stores. 

If we may tip you any Flappy Bird alternatives, we would recommend: Flappy City Cookie Bird Game, Clumsy Bird or Ironpants. If you want to play a real Flappy Bird game by Dong Nguyen, you will need Amazon Fire TV. There is a revised version of Flappy Bird on there called Flappy Birds Family, which is a little bit more relaxing to play.