:: CROSSUDOKU
:: POLISHED REWRITE
:: ALL SYSTEMS NOMINALI spent the better part of my weekend playing Flappy Royale. I didn’t necessarily want to. I just felt like I had to. It’s a hypnotic experience that’s way too easy to just keep playing.
Flappy Royale is the brainchild of Orta Therox, Em Lazer-Walker, and Zach Gage. It's a very simple idea: Take the the rules of Battle Royale games (e.g. PUBG, Fortnite, Apex Legends) and apply them to Flappy Bird. 100 players play as birds that jump out of a bus. From there, they must fly between as many pipes as possible until one player is deemed the champion.
The game controls pretty much exactly like Flappy Bird did back in 2013. The only real differences are the hopping out of the bus (presumably inspired by the Fortnite Battle Bus) and 99 ghost birds flapping on screen with you, all competing for the number one spot.
This latter element—the ability to see other players play while you do—is the secret sauce that makes Flappy Royale such a tantalizing challenge. You can always see your competition flapping alongside you, and you want beat all of them. If you can’t do that, maybe you settle for getting a top 50 finish before diving in again to see if you can do better.
Although it’s not officially released, anyone can go and download the beta release of the game here. In this early state though, the game is already quite popular. Here are some stats Orta Therox shared about the game over the weekend:
Oh… Damn. I was doing the stats wrong.
600,000 games were played on mobile native. 1,300,000 games were played on web.
In two days, there’s been almost 2 million games of Flappy Royale! pic.twitter.com/NmDwYngL2p
— ./orta --tsc (@orta) June 29, 2019
Current Flappy Royale statistics: 20 games started per second right now, with 600,000 games so far. Looks like folks average about 50 plays per session.
— ./orta --tsc (@orta) June 29, 2019
2 million games of Flappy Royale is really impressive, especially considering it populates each of those games with 100 players. Where it starts feeling downright magical is when you consider that all of these matches start pretty much instantly.
The way Flappy Royale eliminates any sort of queue times for matches is ingenious, and probably another big reason for the game’s stickiness. Instead of filling matches with bots or waiting for 100 live players to play a level at once, the game pits you against the ghost data of the last 99 players who played the level before you. In other words, you’re always playing against other people, but you don’t have to wait for them to log in for you to do so.
Right now, Flappy Royale really feels like it has huge potential. It successfully distills the most thrilling aspects of Battle Royale into a really tight mobile package. A lot of this has to do with how quick and easy it is to play ten rounds without blinking, so here’s to hoping the game doesn’t get too bloated with extra features or monetization schemes before it officially releases.
Zach Gage has made quite a name for himself by taking familiar games, tweaking them just so, and packaging the whole thing up in his signature style. Pocket Run Pool is his latest creation, which takes billiards and turns it into an extremely compelling solo score chaser. If you’ve just recently picked the game up and are looking to improve your game, keep the following tips in mind.
:: POCKET POOL
:: FLIP AWAY
:: TERRIFIC TYPOGRAPHY
:: ADDICTIVEZach Gage is at it again. He's built a a tiny fortune telling app called #fortune, that uses twitter to auto-generate your future.
The app was originally designed as a physical installation back in 2013 and Zach loved it so much he's decided to share it with the world.
#fortune is available on the App Store for free right now.
:: ACCEPT NO IMPOSTORS
:: FANTASTIC
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:: GRACEFUL TRICKERYRandom musings of the app store
App Alluvion
This week's only news story also has the sign of the apocalypse and the apps of the week built in - handy, eh? Over a 24 hour period, 453 new games were released! What happened Apple, did someone finally wake up? This is a great disservice to developers, as it's exceedingly hard for an app to get noticed when so many other good games are released on the same day. Sure, developers can set release dates, but if they do, their app is placed on the latest releases section in iTunes according to approval date not publication date, therefore burying it beneath the first page and limiting valuable exposure. Please fix this, Apple! Anyway, enough ranting, here are some of the most notable releases this week. We'll try to have reviews for as many as we can in due time, but until then, here's a quick rundown:
Hybrid: Eternal Whisper
Gamevil's action-RPG follow-up to Zenonia certainly has great aesthetics and a nice online component, but for me so far, the story has been too intrusive and the gameplay mediocre. At $5.99, you may want to wait for our review. Upon playing more, the gameplay has proven more fun and the story's role is minimized. Recommended!
Unify
Zach Gage's first iPhone game is a very stylish Tetris variant with OpenFeint integration. Instead of blocks falling from from the top, the fall into the middle from both the left and the right, where you have to manipulate them using multi-touch controls. Match four or more of the same color to clear blocks. The game starts out slow with only black and white, but quickly becomes challenging with the addition of more colors and faster scrolling. From my time with the game, I can say it's one of the more fun puzzle games on the App Store.
Aera
This beautiful flight sim had our editor Chris in a frenzy before its release. From initial impressions, it seems the game delivers on the hype, but if you don't want to shell out the $2.99 now, Chris will have a review up very soon.
Aves
Aves contains some truly magnificent animations and entrancing binaural audio, but with its simplistic gameplay, it plays more like a tech demo. Still, if you want to see some really cool technology, it's worth the $.99 price of admission, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Ghost LLC's future projects.
Above and Beyond Air Combat
Young developer Josh Rosen's followup to SciFly is a totally different beast. It's still an arcade plane flying game, but it shines with OpenFeint integration, a huge level of customization, open-world gameplay, and shiny graphics. In any normal week, this would easily earn the app of the week award.
Robocalypse - Mobile Mayhem
Robocalypse is a humorous and strong entry into the RTS genre, which is relatively weak on the App Store. Featuring a lengthy campaign and full online multiplayer, Robocalypse is a safe bet for RTS fans.
Alley Gator
Alley Gator is Glu's entry into the quick $.99 games category with accelerometer-based gameplay.
Champion Archer
From the guys who made Sparta comes a port of an addictive online flash game.
Against the Fire!
Meridian's followup to their smash hit Alive 4 Ever is a similar survival shooter but with theme of a fireman putting out water monsters.
Dungeon Hunter (pulled from the App Store)
Otherwise known as Gameloft's Diablo clone, Dungeon Hunter was said to be very impressive, but was unfortunately pulled due to a bug in the game. The game should be available for download again soon.
Castle Warriors
Castle Warriors is another nice addition to the RTS genre on the App Store. The gameplay is similar to Galcon and the graphics are very nice overall.
Super Shock Football
After App Store giants Gameloft and EA turned out full football sims, you would expect Chillingo, publisher extraordinaire to follow up with one of their own, right? Instead, developer Steamroller studios has produced a light-hearted throw back to vintage vibrating football games that is ultimately more suited to the iPhone than either Madden or NFL 2010.
Underground
This Chillingo "shmup" is very stylish but adds little to the genre gameplay-wise.
Scarecrow
Scarecrow is Ezone's take on Doodle Jump and also the latest 3rd party game to incorporate ngmoco's plus+ network.
Apps of the Week
iBlast Moki
iBlast Moki is the best puzzle game on the iPhone, period. This physics-based puzzle game contains challenging gameplay. The goal is to, using bombs and eventually other elements like balloons, get all of the mokis to the exit of the level. It sounds simple, but some of the levels are head-scratchingly devious. There is almost unlimited replay value with over 70 levels, Plus+ integration, and a full-featured level editor/sharer.
Meteor Blitz
By the same token, Meteor Blitz is the best top-down space shooter for the iPhone, surpassing even the famed Isotope. The dual-stick control scheme is incredibly fast and responsive, the graphics are simply stunning, and the gameplay is livened up by the inclusion of RPG elements and many different weapons. The game also features superlative pause and auto-save functions.
Wow, so many great games, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Of course, I won't expect any good game releases for the next month couple with reports of month-long approval times.
