Sunday, March 2, 2014

Game Review: Flappy Bat

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Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, or had a Windows Phone, and never caught on to the Flappy Bird craze, allow me to tell you just how big this game was. Everyone is playing it, or at least they were playing it until the developer yanked the game from the universe and disappeared. To tell you how big this was, at the height of its popularity, it was generating the developer about $50,000 a day. That title never made it to the Windows Phone store though, but many Flappy Titles did. Flappy Bat, by Rune Selvag Golf, is the title that I’ll be diving into today.

I’m going to throw two things out here before we get started. I don’t get the Flappy Bird craze and those “runner” style scrolling games annoy me to no end because I have a talent for HITTING the objects, not avoiding them. That said, I downloaded Flappy Bat from the Store and gave it a try. Did I mention I’m terrible at these games yet?

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Before I delve into the actual game play, I wanted to take a second to describe the graphics on this game, because they are easy to miss. The textures and shading on Flappy Bat are just amazing. The bat is cute as a button, reminding me of a Sanrio character. The background is clean and clear and there’s no distracting items that were added in for flash. The walls are also equally well done, with perfect coloring and layering to create a nearly perfect playing experience on my Nokia Lumia 925. But enough about how beautiful the game is, let’s get down to play.

The game stats out innocent enough with a tap to move up, drop automatically style of controlling. Given the fact that I stink at games like this, I really appreciated the simplicity of the controls. After about 4 tries, I made it thought the first hole in the wall. After a few more attempts, I started progressing in the game, but I still liked to run into the walls or, for even more fun, tried to fly off the top of the screen – and no, that doesn’t work…

After playing for a few minutes – which actually turned out to be 45 minutes – it struck me, this is what that Flappy craze is all about and Flappy Bat nailed it. Needing a break from running into the walls, I took a minute to explore the options menu, which contains various control settings like the sound, vibration and whether or not to submit your high scores.

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It also offers a choice of themes. There’s the classic “city” theme with brown walls and blue background. There’s the “cave” with its black walls and green background and the new “winter” theme that takes me right back to watching Frozen and humming Let It Go in my head with the brilliant white walls and purplish background.

Flappy Bat is a free title Rune Selvag Golf. It does feature ads at the bottom of the play area, but they are unobtrusive and very easy to ignore. The graphics on Flappy Bat are simply stunning for a “Flappy” style game, clean, clear and easy to see. The optional themes in the options only extend the entertaining factor of the game. Flappy Bat is definitely one of the best time killers out there right now and yes, I get the Flappy Craze now.

That said, you should, no, you need to go to the Store right now and check out this free title. The 25MB install size won’t even dent the storage area on a Nokia Lumia 520. For that 25MB of storage, you get a game that delivers amazing graphics, a stellar playing experience and hours of frustration – may I suggest investing in an Otterbox case? – for nothing out of your pocket. If you are not a fan of all things Flappy, then by all means, please download this game and become a fan. If you are a fan and are disappointed that Windows Phone never got it, then ball all means, please download this game and after you download it, stop by the Store and give it that 5 star review it deserves.

Grab it right now in the Windows Phone Store by clicking the link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/flappy-bat/be73e8cb-147b-4a62-9b32-5a17a76a3372

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