Swing Copters is an impossibly difficult version of Flappy Bird

“Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, has just released Swing Copters on Android and iOS.”

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The Flappy Bird sensation met a premature end when the game’s developer Dong Nguyen, decided to abruptly clip its wings in February this year. Despite its simple gameplay, Flappy Bird was notoriously hard to master, and was also insanely addictive, the main reason behind its popularity. 

But a few months ago, Nguyen said that a Flappy Bird successor was in the works, and true to his word, his latest creation, Swing Copters, hit app stores today. Like Flappy Bird, the game features retro-style graphics, and the main character is a little bird again, only this time he wears a helicopter hat. He flies vertically instead of horizontally, and the obstacles include swinging hammers to make things tougher.

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The gameplay is deceptively simple again – tap on the screen to make the bird move in a particular direction, trying to go as high as possible. That’s the only thing that’s simple about the game though. If you thought Flappy Bird was hard, Swing Copters achieves a legendary level of difficulty. After over an hour of playing the game, we made a grand total of 2 points. Even when tapping to make it move in a particular direction, the bird has a mind of its own and moves the opposite way. We tried tapping closer to the bird, nearer to the edges, tapping slowly, tapping faster, but each attempt was just as futile as the last. Tapping frantically seems to work best, but you’ll need to be exceptionally alert and make sure you’re tapping in the right direction. 

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Despite the punishing ordeal, like a moth to a flame, we couldn’t resist the urge to try again, and again, and again, even though we crashed and burnt every single time. It’s ironic that one of the reasons Nguyen stated for taking down Flappy Bird was because fans became obsessed with it, abusing him on Twitter and even reportedly sending him death threats. After an hour of bruising our fingertips, tearing out our hair and skyrocketing our blood pressure, we can only suggest that Nguyen go into the witness protection program for the foreseeable future. 

Despite being enjoyable and challenging, the game’s sheer level of difficulty leads us to believe that most players will give up after a while. We’re determined to keep trying to best that single-digit high score of ours though. In the meantime, if you’ve tried your hands at the game, tell us what your high score is in the comments.

Swing Copters is ad-supported, but you can remove them with an in-app purchase. You can download the game on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.