By Acadia Otlowski
“Flappy Bird” took the app world by storm. But its quick rise and untimely death left some users scratching their heads. What if you didn’t download “Flappy Bird” before it was taken off the market? You either could take to the Internet and buy one of the overpriced used smart phones with “Flappy Bird” loaded on it (some of these phones top out at over $1000) or simply go without the game.
Enter Fall Out Boy. The punk-rock band has made one previous foray into the gaming world, with the game “Fall Out Boy Trail,” a knock-off of the popular “Oregon Trail” game. Now the same company, Mass Threat, that helped Fall Out Boy release its original game has helped the band to release a game called “Fall Out Bird.”
The original “Flappy Bird” had one simple objective: fly your bird through deceivingly small gaps in pipes, without hitting them or the ground. There is only one command: the tap. This tap makes the bird rise, before then rapidly diving towards the ground. By ramping up the difficulty but keeping the simple design, the game was an instant hit. There is no way to actually win the game, only to beat your own high score. Points are scored by passing through each gap between the pipes successfully. The creator of the game was making $50,000 a day in advertising revenue, but decided he couldn’t handle all the requests for interviews, death threats and the general volume of correspondences he was receiving. It was for these reasons that the creator took “Flappy Bird” off the market. Fall Out Boy’s “Fall Out Bird” hit the market right after “Flappy Bird’s” demise.
The game is hilarious to say the least. By replacing the original bird from “Flappy Bird” with the heads of the four band members, with wings attached to them, it made the game more entertaining than it otherwise would be. The pipes, which in the original game were modeled after the pipes in the Mario games, are changed to the neck and head of guitars. When the user messes up, the result is the well-known faces of Pete, Patrick, Andy and Joe crashing and rolling into the ground.
Instead of some mediocre eight-bit background track, the band decided to make the background music “Young Volcanoes,” a song from their new album. By far the most cheery song from the band’s most recent album, “Save Rock and Roll,” this song makes the user feel less frustrated when their “birds” inevitably hit the head of the guitar or the ground.
But “Fall Out Bird” is not without its faults. The game can be very laggy, especially when the user’s phone is connected to 3g or WiFi. For the best quality play time, turn off both of these. This prevents the in-game advertisements from running, which seem to be the source of the lag. The lag can be very frustrating, often the difference between getting a high score and hitting the ground after scoring just one point.
And that song gets old after hours of playing the game. It would be good to have an entire album or collection of works backing the game instead of just one song.
“Fall Out Bird” is a knockoff. But it is a fun and successful knockoff that fills a space that “Flappy Bird” left behind.