Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird is a 2013 mobile game, developed by Vietnam-based developer Nguyễn Hà Đông (Dong Nguyen) and published by .GEARS Studios, a small, independent game developer also based in Vietnam.The game has a side-scrolling format and the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between rows of green pipes without coming into contact with them. The developer created the game over several days, using a bird protagonist which he had designed for a cancelled game in 2012.

The game was released on May 24, 2013 but received a sudden rise in popularity in early 2014. It was criticized for its level of difficulty and alleged plagiarism in graphics and game mechanics, while other reviewers found it addictive. At the end of January 2014, it was the most downloaded free game in the iOS App Store. During this period, its developer claimed that Flappy Bird was earning $50,000 a day from in-app advertisements.

Flappy Bird was removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play by its creator on February 10, 2014, due to guilt over what he considered to be its addictive nature. The game's popularity and sudden removal caused phones with it pre -installed to be put up for sale for high prices over the Internet.Games similar to Flappy Bird became popular on the iTunes App Store in the wake of its removal, and both Apple and Google have removed games from their app stores for being too similar to the original. The game has also been distributed through unofficial channels on multiple platforms.

Flappy Bird is a side-scrolling mobile game featuring 2D retro style graphics. The objective is to direct a flying bird, named "Faby",which moves continuously to the right, between each oncoming set of Mario-like pipes, reoccurring every 1.5 seconds. If the player touches the pipes, it ends the game. The bird briefly flaps upward each time the player taps the screen; if the screen is not tapped, the bird falls due to gravity. The player is scored based on the number of pipe sets that the bird successfully passes through, with medals awarded for the score at the end of the game.

There is no variation or evolution in gameplay throughout the game as the pipes always have the same gap between them and there is no end to the running track, having only the flap and ding sounds and the rising score as rewards. However, some subtle elements of the gameplay design make the game easy to learn but hard to master,a technique used in many games to make them more interesting.

Dong Nguyen grew up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi. He discovered video games by playing Super Mario Bros. as a child, and began coding his own at age 16. At 19, while studying programming at a local university, he won an internship at Punch Entertainment, one of very few video game companies in Vietnam. On discovering the iPhone, he found that its most popular games such as Angry Birds were too complicated, and desired making a simpler game for people who are "always on the move".

Flappy Bird was created and developed by Nguyen in the span of two to three days. The character was originally designed in 2012 for a cancelled platform game. He claims that no part of any of his games were designed to be impossible.He describes its business plan of a free download with in-game advertisements as "very common in the Japanese market".

Nguyen believes that contemporary Western games are overly complex.His company, .GEARS Studios, describes its games as "heavily influenced by retro pixelated games in its golden age. Everything is pure, extremely hard and incredibly fun to play."

Flappy Bird was originally released on May 24, 2013,with support for the iPhone 5. The game was subsequently updated for iOS 7 in September 2013.In January 2014, it topped the Free Apps chart in the U.S. and Chinese App Stores,and later that month topped the same section of the UK App Store where it was touted as "the new Angry Birds."It ended January as the most downloaded App on the App Store.The Android version of Flappy Bird was released to the Google Play store on January 30, 2014. In early 2014, Nguyen claimed in an interview with The Verge that the game was earning around $50,000 a day in revenue through its in-game advertising.

On February 8, 2014, Nguyen announced on Twitter that the game was to be removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play, writing: "I'm sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore." He went on to say that taking down the game has "nothing to do with legal issues".The game was removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play exactly on cue.After removing the game, Nguyen's Twitter account received abuse from fans unhappy with the decision. Nguyen received several threatening messages of murder and suicide.

Tuoi Tre News, an English-language newspaper in Vietnam, reported from a local technology expert that Flappy Bird's removal could have been due to a legal challenge from Nintendo over perceived visual similarities to Mario games. This allegation was denied by a Nintendo spokesman to The Wall Street Journal.Lawyers in Vietnam also denied allegations that Nguyen had to remove the game due to violating new laws on internet use in the country.

Following the removal, many media outlets reported that several merchants on eBay were offering phones which had the app pre-installed for US$1,499 or more, with some receiving bids of over $90,000;however, the listings were removed for violating eBay's rule stating smartphones must be restored to factory settings before being sold.

In an interview with Forbes, Nguyen cited the game's addictive nature for its cancellation, stating: "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever." Nguyen said that the guilt he felt over the game was affecting his sleep, and that his conscience was relieved after he took the game down.

In a March 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Nguyen refused to rule out re-releasing Flappy Bird, on condition that it would come with a warning to "Take a break". On March 19, he announced via Twitter that the game will be re-released onto App Stores, but not anytime soon. On May 15, Nguyen told CNBC's Kelly Evans that the game would return in August, with multiplayer capability and will be "less addictive".

As Nguyen said, August 2014 saw a revised version of Flappy Bird, called Flappy Birds Family, released exclusively through Android's app store for the Amazon Fire TV platform.The new version also features new obstacles not in the original as well as an additional multiplayer option.

The removal has spawned remakes and parodies of the game,such as Sesame Street's Flappy Bert and Fall Out Boy's Fall Out Bird.CNET reviewed seven "Flappy copycats" for iOS two days after the original game's removal, describing the options as "pretty bleak", but singling out the underwater Splashy Fish as the closest approximation of Flappy Bird.

Shortly after the game's removal, security researchers warned that some versions of Flappy Bird and its imitators available on alternative Android app stores have been found to contain malware that can lead to unauthorized charges to a user's phone bills.

Nguyen's other games Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block ranked at 6th and 18th respectively on the App Store during early February 2014 on the back of Flappy Bird's success. He revealed in March 2014 that he is developing three other games, in similar formats to his previous releases.

The number matching game 2048 has been compared to Flappy Bird because of the similarities between how people react to them and by the chain of clones that they are both respectively part of.

Flappy Bird received generally mixed reviews from critics, with a Metacritic score of 52/100 based on seven reviews.The app was criticized by the Huffington Post, which described it as "insanely irritating, difficult and frustrating game which combines a super-steep difficulty curve with bad, boring graphics and jerky movement".The game's difficulty has been a source of ire for many users, with one user stating that it took him half an hour to achieve a score of five points.It is slightly easier on Android than on iOS,according to its creator.

However, a more positive review came from Jenifer Whiteside of Amongtech.com, who suggested that Flappy Bird could eclipse Candy Crush Saga as the most popular mobile game of 2014 due to its addictiveness, Candy Crush's age, and the hype surrounding it.

Nolan Bushnell, the creator of the video game Pong, compared Flappy Bird to his own game by saying "simple games are more satisfying". John Romero, a co-creator of the shooting game Doom, said that Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal."

When questioned at the time by Chocolate Lab Apps, a website for app developers, Nguyen claimed to have used no promotional methods in the marketing of Flappy Bird. He credited the sudden rise in the game's popularity in early 2014 to possibly "luck".However, online marketer Carter Thomas suspected that the developer had used bots to cause its success. When questioned on this by The Daily Telegraph, Nguyen said: "I respect all other people [sic] opinions. I won't give any comment to this article. I'd like to make my games in peace." However when Newsweek inquired about the matter Nguyen tweeted "It doesn’t matter. Don’t you think?...If I did fake it, should Apple let it live for months." 

The game was also criticized by Kotaku, a video games blog, for its open use of Mario artifacts, referring to it as "ripped-off art". However, it has since published a correction, stating that "Flappy Bird's pipe is a new albeit unoriginal drawing".

According to some Vietnamese newspapers, including Thanh Niên and BBC Vietnamese, Flappy Bird is very similar to a game released in 2011 (two years before Flappy Bird) called Piou Piou vs. Cactus, from the gameplay (by tapping on the screen) to the main character design (a small yellow bird with big red beak) to the obstacles (green cacti and pipes). It is reported that several French newspapers like 20 Minutes and Metronews accused Flappy Bird of being a clone. The reporter from Thanh Niên Online tried playing Piou Piou vs. Cactus and confirmed that the similarities between the two games are astonishing.

The French developer of Piou Piou vs. Cactus, known as Kek, told Pocket Gamer that he too noticed that Flappy Bird is "very similar" to his earlier game, but when he contacted Nguyen about it, Nguyen claimed that he did not know anything. Technology editor Patrick O'Rourke of canada.com also charged that Flappy Bird is "almost a complete ripoff" of Piou Piou vs Cactus, as well as that its primary gameplay mechanic is a "rip off" from a game called Helicopter Game, and that it heavily borrowed sound effects from Super Mario Bros. games.

Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Saga is a match-three puzzle video game released by the developer King on April 12, 2012 for Facebook, and on November 14, 2012 as a mobile app from smartphones. As of March 2013, Candy Crush Saga surpassed FarmVille 2 as the most popular game on Facebook, with 46 million average monthly users.According to Business Insider, it is also the most downloaded iOS app for 2013.It is a variation on their browser game Candy Crush.A major expansion to the game called "Dreamworld" was launched in December 2013.

The game is periodically updated, adding new "episodes" and playable levels; new levels are updated first on Facebook followed by Android and iPhone. Candy Crush Saga has "episodes" of 15 levels each (the first two "episodes" have only 10 levels). An update to the game in December 2013 added the "Dreamworld" levels, giving players the opportunity to replay older levels with a new mechanic, which is also periodically updated. As of August 2014 via Facebook, there are 680 regular levels and 395 levels on Dreamworld.

his game is a variation of match-three games such as Bejeweled. Each level has a game board filled with differently colored candies, and might contain obstacles. These different colors include the red jelly bean, the orange lozenge, the yellow lemon drop, green chiclets, the blue lollipop head, and the purple cluster. The basic move of this game is horizontally or vertically swapping the positions of two adjacent candies, to create sets of three (or more) candies of the same color. Each level contains a certain objective that must be completed in a given number of moves (or on a time limit); some levels require clearing "jelly" off the board by making matches on top of them, reaching a certain score, getting ingredient items to the bottom of the board, or having to clear certain amounts or combinations of candies. Levels may also contain blocks to make them more difficult, such as meringue or liquorice swirls, chocolate (which spreads across the board if left uncleared), bombs (which end the level if they are not matched before they go off), multi-layered icing blocks (with tin plates as the last layers), and others. Boosters can be earned or purchased to provide assistance during levels. In computational complexity theory, Candy Crush Saga (along with many other similar match three games) were proven to be NP-hard.

In a secondary campaign known as the "Dreamworld", an additional mechanic is introduced where players play earlier levels but also must maintain a balance on a moon-shaped scale throughout the level. Players must control their matches of two certain colors of candies so the scale does not become entirely unbalanced, causing Dreamworld's mascot owl Odus to fall off the moon. However, filling up the moon scale and keeping it balanced for a certain number of moves will activate the Moon Struck event, causing either one or both of the colors of matching candies to be removed from the board completely, and the player is given a certain number of moves to perform until the scale is reset with two new colors.

Different "special candies" can be formed by matching a combination of 4 or 5 in a certain formation, such as a "Striped" candy (which clears either an entire row or column), a "Wrapped" candy (which acts like a bomb; clearing the 8 surrounding candies, falling, and exploding one more time), or a "Color Bomb" (which removes all candies with the same color of the one it is matched with). Special Candies can also be matched together, producing varying effects; for example, matching a color bomb with a striped candy turns all of the candies of its color into striped candies, which are immediately detonated.

Other special candies appear on the boards for free can be purchased from the in-game store, or won from the Candy Crush Booster Wheel. These include Jelly Fish in jelly clearing boards which clear 3 pieces from the board at random, the Coconut Wheel on ingredient dropping boards which changes three candies in a row into striped candies, and Lucky Candy in recipe boards which when matched change to one of the types of pieces the player needs to clear the objective. Other pieces known as Blockers appear on boards to add to the challenge: Icing (also called Meringues) cannot be moved and can only be removed by matching next to it, Liquorice Locks cage off single pieces of candy to prevent them from use, Chocolate pieces will multiply if not cleared, Liquorice Swirls cannot be easily removed with Special Candies, Candy Bombs will explode and end the level early if they are not cleared, Multilayered Icing requires multiple matches to remove, Chocolate Spawners will produce Chocolate pieces at all times, Marmalade guards Special Candies from use, Cake Bombs can clear the entire board once cleared, and Toffee Tornadoes move on the board destroying pieces and shattering the tile beneath them to prevent use for one turn. Other pieces also appear on levels such as Chameleon Candies which switch colors every turn, Mystery Candies which randomly turn into a Special Candy or a Blocker, and Extra Time Candies on time limit levels.

The player can also purchase various Boosters to attempt to win levels more easily or extend play after a lost level; Lollipop Hammers clear a single piece from the board, Extra Moves can be purchased if running out of moves at the end of a game, Free Switch allows players to switch two pieces that do not possibly match, Sweet Teeth to clear out Blockers and Jelly, Bomb Coolers to add onto Candy Bomb timers if the timer runs out, and the Bubblegum Troll to stop Chocolate Spawners from spawning chocolate from its sides. The Dreamworld levels have their own special boosters: the Restore Balance booster to reset the Moon Scale for 5 turns and the Moon Struck booster to automatically activate Moon Struck.

Different "special candies" can be formed by matching a combination of 4 or 5 in a certain formation, such as a "Striped" candy (which clears either an entire row or column), a "Wrapped" candy (which acts like a bomb; clearing the 8 surrounding candies, falling, and exploding one more time), or a "Color Bomb" (which removes all candies with the same color of the one it is matched with). Special Candies can also be matched together, producing varying effects; for example, matching a color bomb with a striped candy turns all of the candies of its color into striped candies, which are immediately detonated.

Other special candies appear on the boards for free can be purchased from the in-game store, or won from the Candy Crush Booster Wheel. These include Jelly Fish in jelly clearing boards which clear 3 pieces from the board at random, the Coconut Wheel on ingredient dropping boards which changes three candies in a row into striped candies, and Lucky Candy in recipe boards which when matched change to one of the types of pieces the player needs to clear the objective. Other pieces known as Blockers appear on boards to add to the challenge: Icing (also called Meringues) cannot be moved and can only be removed by matching next to it, Liquorice Locks cage off single pieces of candy to prevent them from use, Chocolate pieces will multiply if not cleared, Liquorice Swirls cannot be easily removed with Special Candies, Candy Bombs will explode and end the level early if they are not cleared, Multilayered Icing requires multiple matches to remove, Chocolate Spawners will produce Chocolate pieces at all times, Marmalade guards Special Candies from use, Cake Bombs can clear the entire board once cleared, and Toffee Tornadoes move on the board destroying pieces and shattering the tile beneath them to prevent use for one turn. Other pieces also appear on levels such as Chameleon Candies which switch colors every turn, Mystery Candies which randomly turn into a Special Candy or a Blocker, and Extra Time Candies on time limit levels.

The player can also purchase various Boosters to attempt to win levels more easily or extend play after a lost level; Lollipop Hammers clear a single piece from the board, Extra Moves can be purchased if running out of moves at the end of a game, Free Switch allows players to switch two pieces that do not possibly match, Sweet Teeth to clear out Blockers and Jelly, Bomb Coolers to add onto Candy Bomb timers if the timer runs out, and the Bubblegum Troll to stop Chocolate Spawners from spawning chocolate from its sides. The Dreamworld levels have their own special boosters: the Restore Balance booster to reset the Moon Scale for 5 turns and the Moon Struck booster to automatically activate Moon Struck.

The game is primarily monetized through in-app purchases (through either a credit card or Facebook Credits); players begin with five "lives", lost whenever a level is failed. This applies to all King games. When they are exhausted, users can either send requests to their Facebook friends for more lives, wait for them to replenish themselves (a life is restored every half-hour), or purchase them. At certain points, primarily at the start of new "episodes", users must also either purchase, or receive a request from at least three friends before they may access the next set of levels. Boosters can also be bought using cash or Facebook credits.

Once all levels in an episode are completed, the next episode (starting at episode 3) is locked and the player must either get three friends on Facebook to send them "tickets" to unlock the next episode, it can be unlocked directly through the in-game store, or occasionally the game will allow the player to move on for free if the player has not been able to unlock the next area. If the game is not linked to the player's Facebook account, a new level can be unlocked by playing a Mystery Quest, a random previous level with a higher point threshold for winning. Three Mystery Quests must be completed before the next episode is unlocked, and a player can only complete one Mystery Quest in a single 24-hour period.

Candy Crush Saga had over ten million downloads in December 2012 alone.In July 2013, it was estimated that Candy Crush Saga at the time had about 6.7 million active users and earned revenue of $633,000 per day in the US section of the iOS App Store alone. In November 2013, the game had been installed 500 million times across Facebook and iOS and Android devices.

Candy Crush received particular mention in Hong Kong media, with reports that one in seven Hong Kong citizens plays the game.The game is also featured in Psy's music video "Gentleman".In December 2013, King entered the Japanese market with a series of television commercials in Japan, and by December 4 it had become the 23rd most downloaded game in Japan on Android devices and number 1 most downloaded from the App Store.

Hay Day

In the game, the uncle of the game player (Greg) owns a farm. As he is not able to take care of his farm any more, he hands over the responsibility of caring for the farm to the player. The game starts with a scarecrow teaching the player about harvesting wheat.

The player earns coins and experience points (XP): coins used to buy production building and decoration items and XP used to level up. The XP score is reset to zero every time the player increases to a new level. Player can gain coins and XP by selling goods through a roadside shop, truck deliveries and shipping orders.

One update improved the co-operative nature of the game by adding communities, wherein members can help each other out with materials and items in need. This includes a chat function which enables the farmers to talk with one another and support each other in completing orders and upgrading their equipment.

In June 2014 a game update expanded the playing area to include the restoration of a rundown town to its former glory. The nature of the town is similar to the farm with various outlets and attractions available to serve visitors. From diners and grocery stores, to a cinema and a spa, more venues become available as the player's town level improves, once again based on experience points.

Additionally, farmers own a fishing area, and the town contains a personal train that can be used to travel to neighboring communities and pick up visitors whose needs have not been fulfilled.

New machines, animals, pets, products, crops and activities are added with each update from Supercell to keep the game expanding, exciting and challenging.

The game is well supported by Supercell, with tie-ins to Facebook and other social media sites, and farmers are rewarded with diamonds following any maintenance to servers or bug fixes, and these enable them to produce goods or build machinery quicker than usual.

Hay Day is a freemium mobile farming game developed and published by Supercell.

Hay Day was released for iOS on June 21, 2012 and Android on November 20, 2013.According to a 2013 report, Supercell earned $30 million a month from Hay Day and Clash of Clans, another game made by Supercell.In 2013, Hay Day was the 4th highest game in revenue generated.