Flappy Bird Clone Lands On Android Wear As Flopsy Droid

Now that Android Wear apps are starting to crop up, it was only a matter of time before games for the small screen also started appearing. It should probably come as a shock to no one that one of the first games to land, or should we say fly, into the wearable platform would be nothing less than a clone of everyone's other favorite avian, Flappy Bird.

Even though the overnight sensation that was Flappy Bird is officially dead, its legacy continues to live on and haunt us. Clones that have tried to recreate the success and squeeze out money from users, whether legitimately or illegaly, have flooded the mobile world to the point that Apple and Google had to step in to curb their menace. It was really only a matter of time before someone took that same theme and put it on a smartwatch.

To be fair, Flopsy Droid developer Sebastian Mauer, a German computer science student, isn't exactly trying to compete in that same space. In fact, he isn't trying to compete at all. Flopsy Droid, which uses the same pixelated pipe-riddled gamplay but swaps the bird for the Android mascot, is more likely a test of a smartwatch's capabilities. It's not a paid app and there are no in-app purchases, not that it would do him in any good considering the current situation with paid Android Wear apps.

Due to what might simply be an oversight, but a rather big blunder at that, on Google's part, paid apps for Google's smartwatches are currently broken. At the moment, Google has provided a workaround for developers that involves not using the provided Android Studio IDE and manually inserting the Android Wear APK inside a different folder inside a regular Android app. A proper fix will be coming so developers looking to monetize their Android Wear apps might want to wait for a bit.

That said, Mauer is unlikely to look for moentary compensation for Flopsy Droid. The game uses the libGDX game engine, used for cross-platform game development, but some of its assets are taken from an open source Android game called Replica Island. In fact, Flopsy Droid itself is open source, with the source code available on GitHub, which may not be good thing if you think of how many potential Flappy Bird clones on Android Wear will be able to use this to their advantage and to our discomfort.

SOURCE: Flopsy Droid on Google Play Store

VIA: 9to5Google