Flappy Bird - A game of oneupmanship

Oneupmanship

: The art of outdoing or showing up a rival or competitor

It all began with an innocent taunt from my sbff, Eri Sasaki. At that time, I had never even heard of the game before. In fact, I didn't even know what she was showing me.

I had almost no reaction to this yet - I didn't even know the game's name, much less heard of the game. So I casually asked:

Before the '2 points? dying?' texts it was just a very very mild almost non-existent interest in the game, I didn't really intend to play it just wanted to know what it was called. But this was a direct challenge to me. It became a game of oneupmanship.

I am fairly competitive, and love challenges like this. So when she set out this challenge for me, I went to download the game and try it out.

I have to admit, at first, it was quite challenging. It wasn't as intuitive as the classic 'keep your character up by pressing a button' as a button press actually made you leap, not just go up. But after a while (and by a while I mean 5 minutes), I got the hang of it.

Ok fine I took 15 minutes (according to the time stamp) to beat her score.

Feeling very satisfied, I went to bed.

--

The next day I met my bestie Christabel for lunch, so I was texting her.

The red-circled text is foreshadowing something.

She annoyed me with her next text, where she said she just played and got a high score of 40. What! So I went to have a go and within 5 mins...

Done. Beat her score. I can rest in peace now. 43 is pretty good right?

--

So I went on with my life, without touching this simple annoying game. Then I saw a Facebook post about it, and had to go and ask:

What! His score was 64! That's crazy. And one tier up from mine. I have to beat that now.

I went to have a few goes at it... and beat it! I sent it to my sbff now, the original challenger, to let her know her hopes of beating my score (of what she thought was 48) was snuffed.

She clearly gave up here. But I had to rub it in the next day:

The red circled text is foreshadowing again

Indeed, on my very first try that session I hit a new high score of 72. Ten minutes later...

LOL HUNDRED. WHAT.

I think I was quite stunned when I finally died too. I knew I had gone past 3 digits (one important thing to do well is to avoid looking at your score, but having it change from 2 to 3 digits is quite obvious and distracting), but  wow. Didn't expect this.

..

And just today... I was waiting for my turn in a Hearthstone tournament so I got bored and opened up the silly game again.

And...

LOL 151.


So yup, that's my current score right now. Some people asked me how long it took... and I have NO CLUE. The only thing on my mind while in the run is to maintain a good bouncing rhythm, and avoid the damn pipes. Time perception isn't high on my cognitive list.

Will I stop now? Maybe. Until someone else challenges me. Then a new game of oneupmanship begins.

------


Random tips for Flappy bird

• Sit in a comfortable position. After you clear about 50-70 you'll start to realize parts of your body going numb if you were in a poor posture to begin with. And you can't adjust. Because that distracts you.
• The safest rhythm to achieve is when you bounce up directly above the bottom pipe (rather than bounce up from before the pipe). (meaning you bounce up one bounce away from the pipe, then bounce up again from directly above the pipe. If anyone wants pictures I'll upload it.)
• I found this the safest to avoid bumping the front or back of the pipe by accident. If you lose this rhythm, try to get it back on a subsequent dive/climb
• Practice your dips and dive while your score is low. You need to be accustomed to dropping 3/4 a screen to the bottom pipe, and climbing back up to a height with multiple bounces. You can even practice this before your first pipe - just start from the top of the screen and clear the first pipe accordingly
• Avoid looking at the score. Try to fixate on the right of the screen
• Look at the height of the next pipe and be very clear of what you have to do. Same height = maintain rhythm of bouncing. Climb = multiple taps (not too many!) Dip = slightly slow down taps, or dip entirely

And ultimately, concentrate. Flappy Bird is a game of concentration. I think after a certain level of practice (+ innate ability), everyone attains the same level of skill. What sets the high score then is one's ability to maintain this skill for as long as possible, without mistakes. 

Good luck and happy flapping/bouncing!