Flappy Bird is so addictive that it should come with a warning — and it’s spreading rapidly.
The wildly popular app, which has rocketed up the iOS carts, has an incredibly simple concept. All users have to do is click the screen to help a bird float along in an 8-bit world that looks incredibly similar to Super Mario Bros., weaving it between green pipes. Hit a pipe, you die.
While Flappy Bird is incredibly easy to learn, the game is almost impossible to master, and for that it is wildly addicting. There is even a Vine meme of users trying to keep the bird afloat and failing in the process.
As Justin Davis of IGN noted, Flappy Bird never gets easier, even for veteran players.
“Even with a 50+ high score and most runs climbing well into the double digits, you’ll still die on the first or second gap. A lot,” he wrote. “You never feel safe or comfortable in Flappy Bird’s gauntlet. The game is still out to kill you. And it will.”
And as Davis points out, there are no real instructions for players other than the command “Tap” at the beginning of the game. The only way to learn is to try and inevitably fail.
Users may be familiar with the mechanism behind Flappy Bird. Those old enough to remember the underwater levels of Super Mario will remember the need to click the A button rapidly to keep Mario swimming, and the popular Helicopter Game also called on users to rapidly click a mouse to navigate the helicopter through an increasingly difficult obstacle course.
Now the addictive game is spreading. The developer has just released an Android version to go with the iOS original Flappy Bird game, which is apparently easier to play than the original.
Those interested (and have a lot of time to spare) can get a free download of Flappy Bird through Google Play.