Flappy Bird is a mobile game that was once popular around the world. The game’s mechanism is very simple, players only need to tap the screen to keep the bird flying smoothly over the pipes. The game has no ending, the number of pipes the player crosses is the score, and there is a global score leaderboard to reflect your level.
Despite also spending hours getting high scores, I’m not too fond of this game because it made me feel very pointless. In a way, you waste a lot of time by going after a nebulous high score, as if you’re stuck in a pipe jungle all that time. I made a sarcastic appropriation in response to this point, my choice at first was to ditch the gameplay and just use two pipes to represent the infinite level, the player can press space to maintain flying but it just loops indefinitely in this game, even if it touches a pipe nothing happens, it just goes down and spawn from the top pipe.
Second Iteration
I took into account the fact that my initial game was too simple as an appropriation. I would like to add more playability, irony, and metaphorical symbols. I stuffed the pipes all over the scene, and I slightly calculated the player’s up-and-down range and the pipe’s distance so that after passing through the second set of pipes the player suddenly realized they couldn’t traverse the third one no matter what. This would make them think about how to escape this situation. During the playtest, everything happened exactly as I expected, the tester was confused after passing the second section, but after trying to change their mindset, it became clear that the only way is up. I was heartened when everyone found the ending interesting during the class presentation. Flappy Bird itself is a game that lacks relevance. Bird is symbolized here by anyone who is bound by the prison of thought. Thinking differently is sometimes more important than trying to break through that impossible crack.
