The removal of Flappy Bird, from the mobile stores, is probably one of the strangest events in gaming history. It occurred during the game's peak, Flappy was hip and it was acquiring new players everyday. The demand was high and suddenly the supply vanished! Not for long.. as expected many developers saw the opportunity to fulfill this demand which resulted in a flood of Flappy Bird clones. Some clones had small changes from the original; the bird was replaced by all kind of different characters, the pipes became boxes, poles, force fields, all sort of crazy things.. but the game core was exactly the same. That was their goal, they didn't want to make a new original game they just wanted to be quick and be the first to replace the supply, that Flappy Bird was providing, by making a very similar game.
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| Flappy Bieber - Make Justin Bieber fly between the pipes! |
In the mid-time Flappy Bird was inspiring other people (me included) to create their own original games. Single developers gained hope! It is possible to create on our own a mobile game and to be successful. I was aware that the odds of success are extremely low, but well they must be better than winning the lottery and the prize is still big! Simple games are succeeding time and time again. After Flappy Bird we had 2048, Timberman and many others. It's a very interesting time, the lone developers feel that they have a chance to compete with big game companies.
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| Hunger Race - My first mobile game |
I have decided to make my own mobile game. It is also a very simple game, which I think is the key of success for these low budget games. Using similar mechanics of the Flappy Bird (and other games, e.g. Badland) I added an important twist! Inspired by the Nature I decided that every time we tapped the screen the bird would fly but, as in Nature, every movement has an energy cost so the more you move the more you will need to eat in order to restore that energy. My game is called Hunger Race. In this game we're controlling the flight of a Dragon and our goal is to make him travel the furthest possible. However flying makes our Dragon very hungry and he needs to be eating constantly healthy fruits in order to fly with the necessary speed. So the perfect strategy is to maximize the number of fruits the Dragon eats while minimizing the number of movements (taps)! I also added multiplayer and special boosts to make the game more interesting. For example, we can use a "Weaker Gravity" boost that will halve the gravity making our Dragon fly higher and further with a single tap. Therefore, when this boost is active the player doesn't need to tap as much, saving the Dragon precious energy.
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| Hunger Race - Multiplayer |
I have learned new things while making this game and now I have a product on App Store which feels great! I think Dong Nguyen, Flappy Bird's creator, who was having hatred feelings about his game, as one can read in one of its twits:
I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine, but it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.has all the reasons to be happy about himself and his game. Flappy Bird inspired many developers to work, learn and try to succeed in the gaming business!.. And well, it also made him a lot of money, so he got that going for him, which is nice.
P.S.
Hunger Race is currently available only on the AppStore and you can download it for free here:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id870410181
I will soon create the Android and Windows Phone versions, in the mid-time you can check out the game trailer:
Hope you enjoy it! Give me some feedback.
