Nguyen Ha Dong has done it again. In less than one week, his newest game for iOS and Android, Swing Copters, has topped the US App Store just like Flappy Bird (it has fallen to number four as of press time).
For Vietnam, this is exciting. For the startup, game, and tech worlds, he is lauded as a hero and an inspiration for young indie developers. After all, Nguyen is arguably one of Vietnam’s most famous individuals, enough to be visited by the vice prime minister of Vietnam. In the small capital city of Hanoi, which numbers around six to eight million in population, a healthy mobile gaming community grows. And the fact that dotGEARS, Nguyen Ha Dong’s gaming studio, has come out with another semi-viral hit, no doubt piggybacking off his fame, is surprising. The jury is still out if he’s a one-hit wonder, but this recent rise might hint at some maturity.
5 Key differences between Swing Copters and Flappy Bird
The following five points reveal that indeed, dotGEARS isn’t simply making new games. It’s also modifying ever so slightly. Does this hint at a larger team? Or at more modifications on its games to come? Can we expect more such modifications?
1. Remove Ads:
One change is Swing Copters now allows users to remove ads to play the game unencumbered. Nguyen has stated on repeated occasions that he has no interest in having in-app purchases in his games, and wants to make sure his games are free. It’s likely removing ads is as far as he’ll go.
2. Vertical gameplay:
Probably the most obvious difference between Flappy Bird and Swing Copters is the fact that the little guy has to fly upwards instead of horizontally. But that has also invited a host of new obstacles.
3. Increased difficulty:
What Nguyen has done with the original Flappy Bird concept is create an impossibly difficult game where people became obsessed with one-upping their friends. The same formula is true with Swing Copters. But Nguyen has made this game even more difficult. Rather than contending with just one level of gravity, the character is pulled left or right, forcing the gamer to contend with two sided “gravity”, switching after each tap. It therefore requires considerable more skill and presence of mind to tap at the right moment. This can all be done with one finger.
Fans of dotGEARS are just addicted to playing horribly difficult games and then mastering them to the shock and awe of their peers. Beating your friends at Swing Copters is way better than beating them at Flappy Bird.
4. Crisper pixels
It might be a minor point here but if you pay close attention, you’ll see that Swing Copters' pixels are much more crisp than Flappy Bird. It makes the game look more modern and ready even for Retina screens.
5. Moving obstacles and overall animation improvements:
In addition to the more difficult vertical gameplay, dotGEARS has added moving obstacles. Where the green pipes in Flappy Bird were static, hammers swing left to right, disorienting the swing copter, and smashing his head. This is a new frontier for dotGEARS.
It shows improvement in Nguyen’s design process and coding. Nguyen said on his Twitter that he made the game “so people can forget about Flappy Bird for a while.” It is likely that we’ll see more complicated animation coming from the dotGEARS studio in the future. The character is seen here jumping deftly through obstacles.
Therefore, it is likely that dotGEARS titles will continue to dazzle with new variations on simple gameplay while also advancing animation and artistic design.
Despite being simple, this game takes way more skill
Despite how difficult it is, the gameplay is just enjoyable enough to keep those who are a little more patient to stay the course and rack up higher numbers. Some people have reported up to 80 points.
In Rolling Stone’s in-depth interview with Nguyen, we get an intimate peek into Nguyen’s gaming philosophy: simplicity.
When you play game on a smartphone, the simplest way is just tapping.
He visualized how a person would hold a smartphone with one hand in a train. And his way of releasing games also reflects this austerity. Flappy Bird rose to prominence in February and disappeared shortly thereafter. In May, he sampled a new game that hasn’t been released yet. In August, he released Swing Copters.
If Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, Clash of Clans, and Candy Crush pioneered a whole new style of complicated social mobile gaming where casual gamers play through multiple levels, acquiring power-ups, addictive in-app purchases and social sharing, then dotGEARS is pioneering the exact opposite. It’s leveraging off of Flappy Bird’s virality and capitalizing on another simple game. Will the small studio continue jumping from one simple viral hit to another? At its peak, the studio was making $50,000 a day. This likely made Nguyen a millionaire. But for comparison, Supercell, the creator of Clash Of Clans, made $829 million in 2013. dotGEARS is a studio intent on staying indie. This also means that it’s still humble about being viral. Nguyen has repeatedly stated that he feels it was a fluke and stays true to his love of making games over any intent to set up an empire.
But what will the next game look like?
If you pay close attention to all of dotGEARS' native mobile games, you’ll notice that all of them employ some aspect of gravity:
- Super Ball Juggling: involves two different characters trying to juggle a soccer ball in the air
- Shuriken Block: involves trying to prevent a falling shuriken from hitting the head of your characters
- Flappy Bird: A bird plummets to its death every time it delicately touches a green pipe
- Swing Copters: Again, the copter kid plummets on contact
Is it possible that dotGEARS will only be producing gravity-based games? Are these the only ones that are compelling enough to go viral? For hints of otherwise, take a look at dotGEARS' HTML5 games, listed on its website.
- Smashing Kitty: A cat that jumps up and down and squashes bugs that crawl on the ground
- Droplet Shuffle: Basically, an 8-bit version of the well-known carney cup shuffling magic game that hustlers use to hustle casual passers-by
- Shuriken Block: An HTML5 version of the same native app game
- Ninja’s Assault: Shoot shurikens at incoming ninjas
It’s clear that, in terms of simple games, dotGEARS still has a lot more in the pipeline. It may stick to being indie, but it may also be redefining what it means to be indie for mobile gamers.
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