The Science Behind Flappy Bird

Mobile games have become immensely popular over the past decade, due to the widespread adoption of smartphones. Over the years, many games have come into the spotlight due to their addicting and fun nature. Flappy Bird was one of the most popular games in the world around its release, played by millions of users all around the world. The game was released in 2013, but was removed by the creator due to guilt over the widespread addiction. Due to its popularity there have been hundreds of copies released on the internet that are still popular due to the popularity of the original game. Flappy Bird is a mobile game originally developed by Dong Nguyen, a Vietnamese videogame programmer. Flappy Bird is a side scrolling game, like the popular game Super Mario Brothers, where the player controls a bird in a 2D environment. Unlike Mario, the player only has control over the bird’s vertical movement. The main goal is for the bird to travel as far as it can without hitting any green pipes. While the goal and controls are simple the game becomes increasingly difficult and frantic as the bird moves faster the farther it travels. Python is a computer programming language used for many software applications and can be used to create video games on the internet when paired with tools such as Python Arcade. Flappy Bird is one of the games that can be created using Python, and when coded correctly the game can be an almost perfect version of Flappy Bird. During the coding process we created a game design plan with two to three week intervals for our Flappy Bird project. The beginning stages involved establishing a solid plan, sectioning off code, and setting up a skeleton by putting down basic coding. The later stages involved adding on to the skeleton by putting more advanced code down, adding secondary items such as sprites, coloring, and lighting, and adding the finishing touches to the game. We were able to fully recreate Flappy Bird in python as well as add a few of our own ideas to the game by following our game design plan. While we were able to find the original game’s assets, we had to identify most of the original logic by visually watching the game being played, which was more difficult than expected. For our original ideas, we added a second chance feature that allows players to continue after dying if they solve a special challenge. A video will be made available of our recreation of Flappy Bird during the poster presentation and the code will be available on GitHub.