[GameSpot] - Dev Gets Playable Flappy Bird Working Via Mac Notifications

[343iBot]

Flappy Bird exploded in popularity several years ago with its simple gameplay and background elements that had pretty clearly been inspired from the Super Mario series. It was pulled and made largely unavailable--unless you had an Amazon Fire TV unit--shortly after it became huge. However, one developer has managed to bring the game back via an unexpected platform: the MacOS notification box.

With a cheeky tweet asking if others knew that such a thing was even possible, developer Neil Sardesai showed the full Flappy Bird game running via the Mac's notification window. It's actually based on a clone of Flappy Bird rather than the original version, but it's pretty much indistinguishable.

Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification pic.twitter.com/LlMx2AjvHH

— Neil Sardesai (@neilsardesai) April 9, 2021

You can try this clone directly in your web browser by clicking the link we put above, so playing it in the notification box is pretty much pointless. It's not always about whether it is necessary for the ambitious, however, but merely whether it's possible.

Flappy Bird is extremely difficult to master because of its physics, which force you to keep the bird popping upward as its weight tries to drag it down, but it also only requires single taps to play. This makes it perfect for the notification box, particularly if you want to get really angry several times a day while you're also working on your computer.

Getting the game to work via MacOS Big Sur does require a workaround, which Sardesai explained in a later tweet. If you really want to play Flappy Bird via your notifications, however, it's probably a step you're willing to take.

The UserNotificationsUI framework was added to macOS in Big Sur. But for some reason there’s no Xcode template for Notification Content Extensions on macOS. So you have to make one for iOS and then change all your UI’s to NS’s

— Neil Sardesai (@neilsardesai) April 9, 2021

Just be careful if you decide to put the game on your computer. It was pulled, at least in part, because creator Dong Nguyen felt guilty about how addictive the game could be. Even with so many other games available to play on your computer, it could be hard to stop.

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