5 years later, Flappy Bird is still the best mobile game

Flappy Bird was great. Unfortunately, I must use the past tense when speaking about it because the game’s creator removed it from the mobile app stores years ago. Thankfully, the concept lives on in plenty of clones. And now Flappy Bird has reached its logical conclusion: a battle royale game.

Flappy Royale debuted last month as a free-to-play game for iOS, Android, and the web. As the name suggests, it has 99 players competing to outlast one another. If you missed the original Flappy Bird, it had you tapping your screen to guide an awkward flying creature through narrow gates. It was difficult, but it also seemed cheap and slapped together. Players would die after the first or second gate in most sessions, and designer Dong Nguyen borrowed a lot of assets from games like Super Mario World for the visuals. Yet, at the same time, Flappy Bird was appealing.