Birds take the battle bus in Flappy Royale
Though they don't thank the driver, which is rude
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.