After a surprise reveal earlier this week, you can play Dong Nguyen’s latest mobile game today.
Swing Copters is out now on iOS and Android, and it’s a free-to-play app. The simple arcade-style game has players controlling a tiny person with a helicopter helmet who shoots wildly into the air and off to the side with the tap of the screen. Tapping again makes the character swiftly change direction while gaining altitude. As with Flappy Bird, players guide their avatar through narrow passages. Also like Flappy Bird, Swing Copters is incredibly difficult. Nguyen’s last mobile game surpassed millions of downloads and made the developer a lot of money. It’s possible that Swing Copters could do the same, but it has a long way to go before it does so.
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Swing Copters only features one in-app purchase. You can pay $1.29 to remove banner ads. Otherwise, Nguyen will make most of his cash by placing advertisements for other games at the top of the screen. If you’d rather not spend money to swear at your smartphone while you fail to get past the first obstacle for the 100th time, don’t worry — the ads are actually unobtrusive.
Nguyen rose to mobile-game prominence earlier this year when Flappy Bird inexplicably shot to the top of download charts on both iOS’s App Store and Android’s Google Play marketplace. After reportedly earning around $50,000 a day from in-game ads and receiving a ton of attention in the media and on social networks, the developer decided to remove Flappy Bird from both stores. The game designer explained that the game was negatively affecting his simple life and that he felt that Flappy Bird is too addictive.
Earlier this month, however, Nguyen rereleased a new version of his smash hit called Flappy Bird Family. It debuted exclusively for Amazon’s Fire TV Android-based microconsole, and it features new features like splitscreen multiplayer competitions.