Yes, yes, we’re all sick of Flappy Bird clones. We’re sick of them here at What Mobile and you’re sick of them sat at home. The fad is dead and it should stay that way. But…what if we told you there was actually a good reason behind this latest one?
Regardless of how you answered that rhetorical question, we’re going to go ahead and tell you anyway. Tappy Chicken is the first mobile game to be created on the Unreal 4 Engine, the latest in the line of Epic’s leading line of development toolsets (basically, it’s what computer-literate types use to create your favourite games).
When you think of the latest Unreal Engine, you usually picture games a lot more graphically and technically demanding than a simple mobile endless runner. So why the Flappy Bird-a-like? To prove just how easy this latest edition of the engine is to use. Tappy Chicken was created in just a week, you see. By an artist with no programming training whatsoever.
Apparently Shane Caudle decided to sit down one day and have a crack at using UE4. In one evening he had created the looping background artwork for the app, and then a week creating the menus and removing bugs and the like. You can even download the app on iOS for free here and give it a whirl yourself. Or, if you reckon that you’re a whole lot more gifted than Shane Caudle you can get your own copy of UE4 and have a crack at creating the next app sensation for just $19 per month.