Dong Nguyen is back. Barely 6 months after he pulled Flappy Bird offline because he could “not take it anymore” — the game was reportedly raking $50,000 daily in ad revenue — the Vietnamese developer has returned with his latest mind numbing game called Swing Copters. Did you think Flappy Bird was difficult? Swing Copters is impossible. Impossibly addictive. Here’s why
It’s not intuitive
This is obviously delibrate
In Flappy Bird all you had to do was tap the bird upwards in time to avoid the lower pipes. The rest was left to muscle memory. Well, at least that’s how I did it and got up to 77 points.
In Swing Copters, you basically have to guide an upward flying helicopter-man through endless pairs of swinging hammers by tapping on the screen. But it’s not immediately obvious what tapping does. Does it make the bird move upwards, left or right? Do you have to tap simultaneously on either side of the screen? Why is the bird crashing so easily?
It took me a bit to figure out but apparently every alternating tap sends the bird to look and fly in the opposite direction of where it was facing before the tap. It follows in that direction until you tap again. Sounds easy. But in it’s simplicity lies the impossibility.
No time to think or act
It’s one thing to understand the mechanics of the game, it’s another thing to have enough opportunity to apply it. Everything happens so fast you have little time to decide whether it’s best to send the bird left or right. And just as you realise you sent it in the wrong direction, the man is already this close to crashing before you can tap to turn him around. The game is just impossible.
I managed a high score of 4.
You can’t catch up
If you are the competitive type, you want to stay away from Swing Copters; it will give you sleepless nights. The game is barely 24 hours live and some dudes are already breaking the leaderboard with unimaginable scores.
How are these scores even possible? The only scenario I imagine these scores are possible is in tool-assisted speedruns. That’s the only way I can make sense of the leaderboard while I continue trying to beat my high score of 4.
That’s the thing about this game, you will always want to better your previous high score. Swing Copters is already set to be a hit. How Nguyen has managed to successfully replicate, and possibly better, the success formular of Flappy Bird is testament to his genius.
If you think you are brave enough to take the Swing Copters challenge, the game is available for Android and iOS. Good luck passing through the first gate.
