Remember Flappy Bird? It’s back, in expanded form. The game so addictive it caused its creator to destroy it for fear of what he’d unleashed on the world is making a return, and it’s hitting browsers this year, with a mobile version to follow in 2025.
Per a new official website for the little yellow bird and its infuriating pipe-based gameplay, Flappy Bird will be available for iOS and Android, as well as browsers. Rather confusingly, the game’s Linktree page says it’ll be playable “exclusively on Telegram”.
A description on the site claims that Flappy Bird is “refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to soar again”, and that this will indeed be “the official Flappy Bird game”, so this isn’t one of those cheap imitators that sprang up in the wake of the original’s disappearance.
Of course, this being a 2024 revival of Flappy Bird, you can expect all the usual modern mobile game trappings. The relaunched version of the game will come complete with “new game modes, characters, progression, and massive multiplayer challenges”, according to a press release.
Those modes include a basketball-based mode in which you guide the lil’ bird through hoops, as well as an honest-to-goodness Flappy Bird battle royale (no, not that one).
Said press release also confirms that the browser-based versions of Flappy Bird, which include a version for mobile web browsers, will launch this fall, and that the iOS and Android versions will follow next year.
It looks like original Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen won’t be involved with this revival. Instead, the group spearheading the game’s relaunch calls itself Flappy Bird Foundation, and the group says it will “revamp the game’s ecosystem” while retaining the “familiarity of the game design” enjoyed around the world.
The original Flappy Bird was released in 2013, but its meteoric rise to fame came in 2014, at which point it gained millions of players and attained the number one spot in the iOS download charts.
However, just a couple of weeks after its sudden surge in popularity, creator Dong Nguyen took the game down, claiming he couldn’t “take this anymore” (referring to the game’s overexposure).
Whatever Nguyen may think of Flappy Bird, it seems Flappy Bird Foundation disagrees, and that’s why you’ll be able to play Flappy Bird once again in your browser this year and on your phone next year. Stay tuned for more.
