After Candy Crush and Angry Birds, it seems that a new game has become the new obsession for mobile gamers, Reuters reported.
One glance at the iTunes and Google Play app and you know that mobile gamers have gone a little cuckoo over games about birds.
Flappy Bird, created by Dong Nguyen of dotGears, an indie game studio based in Vietnam, is currently the No. 1 free app on both Apple and Android devices.
Since it was uploaded in May, it has received nearly 500,000 four-star reviews in the iTunes store, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, "Nguyen has two other games perched high atop the iTunes charts -- likely resulting from enthusiastic word-of-mouth about Flappy Bird. These include Super Ball (#2) and Shuriken Block (#6)."
Strangely, the growth of the games have been entirely organic, Nguyen told the app development blog Chocolate Lap Apps.
"I didn't use any promotion methods," he said.
Characterized by a rudimentary graphic display and extremely straightforward (read: nonexistent) storyline, Flappy Bird has been described as infuriatingly difficult to win.
"Players must continually tap on their touchscreens in order to navigate a bulgy-eyed yellow bird between green pipes -- not unlike those traveled by Super Mario himself," Reuters reported.
Garnering public attention recently, it is a free program that features ads but offers none of the in-app purchases that have made games like Candy Crush Saga so immensely lucrative.
While piggybacking on buzzwords -- like "birds" -- has proven effective in an increasingly congested app market, it has also raised legal eyebrows, Reuters reported.
Candy Crush developer King even successfully filed a trademark claim on the word "candy," while Zynga owns a trademark for the phrase "with friends," originating from its massively successful Words With Friends app.
Flappy Bird's success has come as a pleasant surprise even to Nguyen himself. "I don't know how my games can be so popular," he told TechCrunch. "Most of my players are kids in schools."
