This Might Be The Craziest (And Best) 'Flappy Bird' Clone Yet

This Might Be The Craziest (And Best) 'Flappy Bird' Clone Yet

The bird flaps no more, but that doesn't mean your frustration is over.

With the blessing of "Flappy Bird" creator Dong Nguyen, one developer is taking "Flappy Bird" gameplay and adding a new twist: Snapchat-like messages from your friends when you beat a high score. You read that correctly: It's "Flappy Bird" combined with Snapchat. Your life will never be the same again.

"Amazing Cupid," the brainchild of Indonesian developer TouchTen, has players fly a blue-haired Cupid through columns, in the exact style of gameplay that "Flappy Bird" made infamous. However, this new game comes with a few twists:

  1. Three levels of difficulty. Players can decide between Normal, Hard or Impossibro. But only Impossibro scores mean anything in real life because ... duh.
  2. It's going to make fun of how pathetic you are. If you played "Portal," you probably remember GLaDos, the rogue AI who imprisoned you and basically told you how worthless you were every five seconds. Cupid works kind of like that in this game. Should be great for your self-esteem.
  3. Your friends will also be telling you how pathetic you are. In what is perhaps the biggest twist of this new game, you can send your friends personalized messages any time they beat a challenge you set for them (like flying through five columns, for instance). Prepare for some serious smack talk.

TouchTen CEO Anton Soeharyo says the company was looking for a way to gamify self-destructing Snapchat messages, and that the rise of "Flappy Bird" provided the perfect opportunity.

"We were working on a publishing platform ... and part of that is how to increase user engagement," he said via email. "We thought one feature would be the secret message 'chat,' but we didn't have the time to think of the perfect gamification of this feature. So when 'Flappy Bird' phenomenon came, we found this genius gameplay -- easy to learn, hard to win -- and we finished up 'Amazing Cupid' within one to two weeks."

And those weeks coincided perfectly with the "Flappy Bird" fury and subsequent fall. The game rose to the top of the App Store and Google Play last week, only to have its developer remove it, presumably due to the incredible amount of media attention and scrutiny it received.

TouchTen was accused of copying another developer's game in early 2011, and Soeharyo said that the company took extra caution in creating "Amazing Cupid" by first reaching out to famously shy "Flappy Bird" developer Dong Nguyen.

"I believed that by asking for his permission and getting it, I have done it in the most ethical way," said Soeharyo. However, he insisted that TouchTen wanted to not just take the gameplay, but add value to it, through the secret messages and mean quips from Cupid throughout the game. "I believe 'Amazing Cupid' is not innovative or revolutionary at all, but I believe it is well executed. We took the gameplay that the market wants and combined it with the popularity of Snapchat, and our team did their best to finish it in a limited time."

Soeharyo has one main hope for the new title: that it makes people happy. Or, at least, as he puts it, "annoyingly entertained." And if this game is anything like its predecessor, we don't think he'll be disappointed.

"Amazing Cupid" is already available on Google Play. Soeharyo said the game is pending approval from Apple's App Store and should be available around Valentine's Day.

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