Many games introduce difficulty through complexity. Here's a game that's simple to grasp, hard to play, yet not boring or frustrating.
I wish this was acknowledged more often, as it might have made the developer feel more comfortable being associated with his game's meteoric success.
And then - by allowing a quick restart, any frustration is overshadowed with the desire to try again.
There are other interesting fine-details. For example, notice when the bird starts to dive (an experience game developer pointed it out to me). It happens when the bird goes under the last flap-point. This allows for a much deeper control system than the one-switch interaction suggests. This depth is intuitively grasped by the gamer on some level, providing more fuel to try again.
If your hit-boxes aren't the same size as your sprites, players are frequently going to die when they didn't even appear to hit the pipes. So no, it isn't always the user's fault.
The conspiracist in me wanted to believe the pipes had additional gravity or something that caused me to hit, but practically speaking I wonder if we're simply used to games making hitboxes smaller than the avatar. I certainly noticed that in Jetpack Joyride.
Yes, it's an often-used trick to enhance the feel of gameplay. Generally you want to make the hitbox of the player, and of the "bad" things smaller, and the hitbox of "good" things (items etc) larger.
This is all (just one) part of the philosophy that the game should behave as the player intends to control it, which is not always equivalent with the literal interpretation of how the player controls it.
Another example is jumping in platform games, if you walk off the edge of a platform, many games will give you a few frames of leeway in which you can still jump, even if the character is actually in mid-air. (alternatively a game can make the platforms' hitbox slightly larger than they appear, but in my experience the leeway approach makes for smoother gameplay)
All of these tricks basically make a game easier to play, but in a way that feels very satisfactory to the player. The idea being, you can always make up for the level of difficulty by making the levels harder, the enemies faster, etc. This shifts the balance from hardness by frustration to challenge.
The fact that Flappy Bird obviously subverts this philosophy, I think is part of its wtf-intrigue. Whether the author of the game did it on purpose or not, is another question.
That's something that's becoming more evident to me with each new clone that pops up.
The pipe gap, the distance between the pipes, the relationship between the height of your flap and gap of the pipes. The tuning of the gravity, etc.
It's all incredibly well done and it's why it's so engaging. If I were to make a clone I would copy all of these properties exactly.
y(t) = y0 + 13.8 - 147 * (t - t0 + 0.288)^2
helicoptergame.net
Flappy bird actually is supposed to be a troll, and that's why its so popular. People found its ridiculous difficulty to be funny, and that's why the game went viral.
I agree with the other commenter that it isn't well-tuned at all. The hit-detection is so bad that it ruins the game.
It's a very similar idea, but how the game is played and the consistency of the obstacles are very different.
The way the game is played is nearly identical. You either increase your altitude or decrease it.
I agree that the consistency of the obstacles is different though.
Also, it doesn't really matter if he did something already done or not. What matters is that he did it in a way that was seen as better by a significant amount of people.
http://www2.sunflat.net/en/games/sfcave.html
http://www2.sunflat.net/en/games/sfcave3d.html
3D SF cave is my favorite by far.
I think we had a game like this on BBC Micros
>Many games introduce difficulty through complexity. Here's a game that's simple to grasp, hard to play, yet not boring or frustrating.
I don't think Flappy Bird is any better tuned or has a better feel than any number of games. I have played many, many games far better on a Ti-85 and they don't even stand out.
And it is boring. There's no escalation or change over time. Once you can get to 50 you can get to 100 or 200. It's like bouncing a ball on a paddle and trying to get the highest score.
I would suggest http://terrycavanaghgames.com/maverickbird/ if you are looking for something better.
More than anything I was trying to respond to the parent's question about why the game works at all, especially compared to so many bad single-switch games in the app store.
(In writing this I just realized - Maverick Brid is not a single switch game like Flappy Bird. Not that it matters - even without the dive key it's superior).
http://www.addictinggames.com/action-games/helicoptergame.js...
I think flappy bird went viral because of the difficulty.
It's "I wanna be the guy" for people who don't like video game culture and immaturity.
If you're fine with both of those, however, go play "I wanna be the guy"!
These are not new. Nintendo Game&Watch games were very simple and could keep people playing for hours. Mario Party (in all its many versions) featured similar micro games.
People love the idea of a game that has almost zero controls, with perfect tuning, and a simple to share high score.
Flappy Bird is also hard - I am hopeless at it. I love it for exactly that reason. I'm not great at games so if I can power through some levels I know the devs have just stuffed some easy content in there.
The problem now is in finding these apps. The tuning is tricky to do. The market will be flooded with poor quality clones. It'd be really tempting to allow IAP power ups - "hit one pipe without dying!"
Then the roll-on effect happened where everyone starts using it to brag about their scores :).
If it wasn't Flappy Bird, it would be something else. But this game does have the key elements: simple, accessible, shareable.
The #1 most subscribed-to youtuber[0] (PewDiePie) did a video on this game right around the time its popularity skyrocketed.