Forget the Flappy Bird remake, someone cloned the original and it's ready to play

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• Releases are dropping fast and furious

Key Takeaways

• A clone of Flappy Bird is available on GitHub at under 100KB. It's free to play and open source.
• The game is in active development, so some bugs are expected. Try different versions to see which works best for you.
• It is easy to sideload the APK from GitHub for a nostalgic Flappy Bird experience.

You may have read the news that there is a remake of Flappy Bird coming soon, or maybe you read that the people who are remaking the game have nothing to do with the original creator Dong Nguyen, despite insinuating the remake was created with the help of its predecessor (an ambiguous claim likely made on purpose). As you can imagine, the hype for the remake died fast. But I do have some good news. An enterprising developer over on GitHub has created a clone of the original game, and not only is it free, but it's also open source, and you can sideload the APK right now to take it for a spin as one of Android's best arcade games.

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Why make a Flappy Bird clone?

Short answer: Why not

Source: VadimBoev

If you are wondering why someone would clone Flappy Bird, here are the words of the cloner VadimBoev (above). The idea was to make a version of Flappy Bird written only in C, producing an APK that clocks in at less than 100KB. VadimBoev succeeded, and so has released the APK on GitHub. It is open source, and of course, the APK is free, so not only can anyone play, but anyone can also contribute to development.

But not everything is perfect

The game is still under development

Upon my first installation of the APK, this clone of Flappy Bird had an issue with game speed and framerates. Correctly pointed out by a user on GitHub, the game's speed was directly affected by the phone's refresh rate. So, the higher the refresh, the faster the game. But a flurry of updates have dropped in the last few hours, fixing the game speed issue, but this has caused an unintended consequence, some of my taps aren't registering. I'd say that's a larger issue compared to the game's speed being tied to framerate.

So, for now, I recommend using the 1.1 version and adjusting your phone's framerate to 60FPS to ensure the correct game speed (or leave your device at a higher framerate for a real challenge). But hey, at least the developer is moving fast, so perhaps the new tap issue will be fixed in a jiffy, like the game speed issue.

Grab this clone of Flappy Bird right now

GitHub has the latest APK

While VadimBoev's clone of Flappy Bird isn't on the Play Store, you can easily sideload the game by grabbing the install file from GitHub. The current version is 1.5, only just updated today, so development is still active, but since 1.5 has a tap issue, I recommend using 1.1 and adjusting your phone's framerate to 60FPS. At the very least, we have a clone version of Flappy Bird on our hands that is free to play without any ads in the way, and is open source, ensuring it will remain free. So what are you waiting for, install the game for some nostalgic Flappy Bird action.

Flappy Bird (clone)

This Flappy Bird clone comes from VadimBoev, an open source release on GitHub that offers the game recreated in C, clocking in at under 100KB.

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See at GitHub

UPDATE: 2024/09/23 14:05 EST BY MATTHEW SHOLTZ

Releases are dropping fast and furious

Since this post went live, a handful of updates have been released on GitHub, fixing a bug while creating another. So, make sure to try different releases to see which works best for you. We recommend sticking with 1.1 for now.