Even before Flappy Bird was pulled from the market by its creator, the app store was already plagued by people looking to cash in on the game type. Suddenly 8-bit side scrolling games were the rage, ranging from similar types of games like Red Bouncing Ball Spikes to almost exact clones like my favorite, Splashy Fish.
Now Rovio has jumped into the genre with the release of their new game, titled Retry, which tugs on the heart-strings of Flappy Birds while bringing the Rovio touch to the “don’t touch the walls” genre.
In Retry you pilot a plane that’s all too willing to do upwards loop-de-loops rather than go straight. Unlike Flappy Bird, you’re not forced to go at one fixed speed – you have some control how fast you go, but it employs the similar mechanic of having to be steady and precise with your tapping skills. Additionally there is some level progression – at bases you can land your plane on the ground, giving you the option to unlock a checkpoint if you have enough coins.
Like Angry Birds and all the other games in the Rovio franchise, you get pixilated 8-bit stars for each level unlocked after finishing the level, or getting crashes.
From the app description, Rovio writes,
From the guys sitting in the room next to the guys who made Angry Birds, comes RETRY – a game so hard, so addictive, so old school that you’ll think you’ve stepped into an 8-bit time machine and gone back to 1986. Totally rad!
According to the boot screen the game was created by Level 11, which is Rovio’s prototyping team that looks like it started around January 2013.
Flappy Birds has redefined the side scrolling “don’t touch the walls” genre, making anything 8-bit where you crash and start over feel like some sort of clone, but perhaps a more apt comparison would be the the old helicopter-in-a-cave game that everyone played way back when. Update: After playing much more (it’s addictive) there’s a lot of challenges to the game, like trying to go backwards to get coins, moving walls, water, and other challenges that make you question whether you should stop at a checkpoint to pay your precious coins. It’s worth the download.
The app can be found on the Finnish app store at least, here. At the time of writing it was not available in the U.S. app store.
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