Birds take to the battle bus in Flappy Royale

In 2019, there are exactly two directions for developers to take Flappy Bird remakes. One, as Alice O wrote about recently, is to transfer it onto hardware that lived and died long before we were ever cursed by this dead-eyed avian. The other, obviously, is to blend in the new hot sensation. Welcome, Flappy Royale.

You know how this goes. 100 birds drop into a hellish pipe-spiked landscape and attempt to make it through as many as possible without bonking their heads and/or bellies. I can’t tell you whether the last remaining bird gets a chicken dinner for their troubles, because it’s too difficult for me to win, but I really hope not because that would be horrifying.

You can see all the other birds in a translucent pack behind you, made even more chaotic by the customisation options available. Once I swear I saw a bird that was just a croissant.

The fact that these birds hop out of a flying bus at the beginning of the game is so charming. Escaping the vehicle at the perfect time is a key aspect of any battle royale game, but the fact it’s a bus rather than a plane really demonstrates how Fortnite blew up the genre.

This is essentially a more polished, up-to-date-with-cultural-trends version of the Flappy Bird MMO that Nathan Grayson wrote about years ago, but I poked my head in there for a look around and it’s a ghost town. We are too fickle.

Flappy Royale is aiming to release on iOS and Android devices next month, but there’s a demo with all the functionality you’ll need to get your flapping fill now, in your browser, for free.