In a time before Flappy Bird, developers were mostly afraid to make difficult games. Now, the developer of Angry Birds is expecting you to die so often in its latest release that it is calling it “Retry.”
Above: The plane from Retry cannot fly straight.
Rovio, the Finnish studio responsible for the world-famous slingshot-flinging fowls, just debuted its latest mobile game. Retry has nothing to do with Angry Birds — although it is similar to that other avian-based game, Flappy Bird. It features a small propeller plane that can only perform loops. Players must guide the erratic aircraft through an 8-bit-style world filled with obstacles without touching them … and you’re going to touch them. Retry is out now in Canada, Finland, and Poland as part of a soft launch, and Rovio intends to release it worldwide soon on “app stores.”
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Rovio’s experimental development team, Level 11, is responsible for creating the game, and it describes Retry as follow:
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 1886. Totally rad!
Spin for the win! You’ll need to master the loop to succeed. Fly. Crash. Repeat. It’s called “Retry” for a reason. Booming synthesizer soundtrack! Mega tunes for a mega game.
Photorealistic 8-bit graphics! Jaw-dropping visuals will take your breath away.
As you can see, Rovio and Level 11 aren’t backing away from the difficult and old-school look. Retry’s official website even has a tip that players who are having trouble should sleep and then try again.
It’s quite likely that Flappy Bird’s success inspired the developers at Rovio. The simple mobile game also featured pixelated art, simple mechanics, and high difficulty. Flappy Bird also encouraged players to keep retrying over and over, which Retry is obviously focusing on. At the same time, Retry also contains elements from games like Kuru Kuru Kururin, a 2001 Game Boy Advance release that put players in control of a spinning stick that they must guide through and around obstacles.
Retry isn’t the first game to look to Flappy Bird. The mobile title continues to inspire dozens of knockoffs despite the fact that its creator removed it from the mobile app marketplaces while it was still one of the most-downloaded games in the world.
Rovio is likely hoping that it will at least see a fraction of the success with Retry that Flappy Bird did. The Angry Birds company has struggled to capitalize on its early mobile success as developers like Candy Crush Saga’s King and Clash of Clans’ Supercell leave it behind in terms of revenue.
But instead of releasing an Angry Birds version of Candy Crush or Clash of Clans, Rovio is looking in the other direction at Flappy Bird … and how replicating the unexpected hit might help it carve out a new niche.
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