Overview
Flappy Bird is an indie free-to-play side-scrolling action game developed and released by .Gears for iOS devices on May 14, 2013. It was later released on Android devices on January 30, 2014 and was later removed from both storefronts on February 10, 2014.
A retro-themed game by Vietnamese develoepr Dong Nguyen (and his studio .Gears), Flappy Bird has players controlling Faby, a yellow bird who must navigate between pairs of pipes (that appear with at random heights) without touching them or the ground. Faby starts in the middle of the screen and automatically falls downward, only rising by tapping the screen to make him "flap" (hence the title). The game is auto-scrolling, and players last as long as they can while earning points (once for each pair of pipes cleared), with players earning in-game "medals" for earning 10, 20, 30, and 40 points in one play. As a free-to-play game, it includes in-game advertisements between plays.
The game is known for its "sleeper hit" status, as it received a massive influx of players from the United States in early 2014 (likely due to reviews from popular YouTubers). Due to its popularity, Nguyen himself removed the game from storefronts on February 9, 2014, claiming that he feels guilty to create an "addictive product". Due to the game's removal, numerous unofficial clones and imitators of the game were made (such as the Sesame Street parody Flappy Bert and the "L Land" easter egg on certain Android phones). The game later received a sequel for the Amazon Fire TV, titled Flappy Birds Family.
In addition, the game received an official arcade port (as a video redemption game) by Bay Tek Games. This version includes a dedicate cabinet with a large red button that's used to flap Faby.
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