Real Life Flappy Bird Review (PC)

It’s a bit like killing two birds with one stone, reviving Flappy Bird from the graveyard of Android and iOS games. On the one hand, it allows those who missed out on the opportunity to lose their hair to the 2013 mobile phenomenon to experience it for the first time, and on the other hand, it gives avid creators a chance to add their own flair to the pre-existing blueprint. In the case of Real Life Flappy Bird, both of these things come to mind. Oh, it isn’t quite Flappy Bird, but it might as well be the next best thing, given the striking similarities that it shares with its sacred forefather.

Real Life Flappy Bird doesn’t change much of the gameplay; in fact, it “borrows” just about everything that made the OG version of the game the cult staple that it was. From the tediously familiar green pipes to the flailing wings of the pioneering winged hero — Real Life Flappy Bird features all of those things that wound up transforming the original into a universal mockery of mindless clicking games. And regrettably, it is just as addictive as its predecessor. Go figure.

As the title suggests, Real Life Flappy Bird is, to some extent, the product that you would naturally expect of a two-for-one emulation that blends the traditional tropes of a clicking-based arcade game with a human controller. I suppose, when all’s said and done, that’s really all this is: a human version of Flappy Bird, only with fewer wings and more, you know, aimless batting and flapping around. It’s basically Flappy Bird VR, we’ll leave it at that.

More Flapping, More Headaches

Real Life Flappy Bird doesn’t beat around the bush with its premise. Like the founding father of stress-inducing fluke platforming games, it more or less invites you to relive the same experience—the journey of hurling a generic pixelated bird through an endless corridor of annoyingly sprightly pipes by flapping your wings and evading an inevitable plummet. The only major difference here, of course, is that players don’t click to flap their wings, but rather, connect their webcams to the game and—you guessed it—imitate a bird in order to help the on-screen soarer navigate the course. And if you think that sounds all rather straightforward and barebones, well, that’s because it is.

Similar to its mobile counterpart, Real Life Flappy Bird has a relatively short shelf life. It’s so short, in fact, that you might question whether or not the price tag of five or six bucks is worth a somewhat measly fifteen-minute chuckle. Perhaps you could squeeze a little more out of it, provided you made the conscious decision to host a party and wrangle a few friends to duke it out for a better score. If that isn’t in the realm of possibility, though, then you might struggle to claim your money’s worth in this shameless clone of a universally popular mobile game.

Flailing & Failing

For a workout simulator, it gets the job done I’ll admit, seeing as your primary task in the game pretty much revolves around the act of flapping your arms in an almost circular motion for as long as you can hold out, and taking short intermittent breaks to descend and maneuver through lower portions of the map. A lower body workout it most certainly is not — but an upper body endurance test, on the other hand, it is. If that’s the sort of thing that you’re on the market for, then you won’t find a shortage of good old-fashioned, almost primitive cardiovascular exercises here.

There isn’t a huge amount else that we can touch base on here. Visually, Real Life Flappy Bird has the same trademark values and features as the other iterations in the ragtag category—a pixel-like beaky bird; an infinite stream of green pipes that vary in length; and a generic hillside backdrop that offers little to no creative appeal in any way shape, or form. In other words, if you’re familiar with Flappy Bird 1.0, then you probably won’t struggle to see the core similarities that accommodate this particular space.

Verdict

I’d love to say that it was a real treat, returning to the endless stream of jolly green tubes and flapping wings. I would also love to say that the process of racking up points and getting a place on the board was as mindlessly entertaining as it was back in 2013. But the simple truth here is that, even with a fresh lick of paint and a new way to play, Real Life Flappy Bird just doesn’t serve much purpose other than to be a copycat killer with a couple of extra mechanics. And as with most mindless clickers, there’s a novelty factor that sadly wears thin shortly after flailing through the first batch of sequences. It’s fun at first, I’ll admit. But it also doesn’t take long for it to become as equally tedious and painfully boring as it was during its heyday.

If, by some random coincidence, you were desperate to claw your way back into the armpit of frustratingly addictive mobile games, then it’s likely that you’ll enjoy flailing your arms around in Ian Charnas’ love letter to the acclaimed Flappy Bird sensation. If, however, you couldn’t care less about delving deeper into the seemingly bottomless barrel of copycat indies, then honestly, I wouldn’t blame you for giving this particular vessel a wide berth.