It looks like gamers aren’t quite ready to let go of Flappy Bird, the wildly popular game that was pulled from the Apple and Android stores last week. The evidence? A flock of clones that are currently dominating the app charts.
A quick summary of Flappy Bird: Users tapped the screen repeatedly to keep a poorly animated bird afloat, often dying within seconds, in a world that looked like a cheap Mario Bros. knock-off. Regardless, it rocketed to the top of the free app charts, only to be taken down by creator Nguyen Ha Dong because it was ruining his “simple life.”
Like flappy vultures, other developers swooped in, and now the top free iOS app is a game called Splashy Fish. One review: “It's just like Flappy bird...But....Better!”
Other similar games in the top 10 are Ironpants, City Bird, and Fly Birdie. Apparently the one thing you can’t do is include the word “Flappy” in your title, as developer Ken Carpenter of Mind Juice Media found out when submitting a game called Flappy Dragon to Apple's App Store.
He tweeted, "This is just not my ******* week: Rejected. 'We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app.' Which app? FB doesn't exist!?!?!"
Apple told The Verge that it was simply trying to avoid confusion, as fans might think that a game called Flappy Dragon could be connected in some way to Flappy Bird. (The original title was also rejected by Google Play, where it is now listed as Derpy Dragon).
Apparently Apple has been more strict about banning Flappy Bird clones than Google Play, which is filled with games like Flappy Fish, Flappy Cat, and, yes, Flappy Doge.