Game Review: Happy (PlayStation Mobile)

If the title of this game doesn’t give it away immediately, the screenshots will – this is another Flappy Bird clone to hit PlayStation Mobile and if I told you that it was developed by Lightning Game Studios (refered to as B.P. on the PSN Store listings) you’d be prepared to skip the rest of this review and straight to the score at the bottom knowing what to expect…

It’s standard fare for a Flappy Bird clone – tap the screen to flap your birds wings to keep him airborne and manoeuvre him through gaps that appear randomly in columns that are moving continually towards you, scoring points the longer you surving. The only real differences between this and other clones on the market surround the bird itself. For some strange reason he’s wearing a top hat throughout the game (which falls off when he collides with any of the columns) and that it changes colour randomly each time you play a new game.

The controls feel quite sluggish and unresponsive throughout and for a game that is reliant on timing that is unforgiveable. To make matters worse, the collision is questionable at best and certainly more often than not I found myself crashing to the ground despite apparently traversing the gap through a column safely. Ignoring everything else about the game for a minute or how blatant it looks in terms of copying the original game, those two elements alone made the game so frustrating that it left my patience stretched beyond its limits.

What did seem like a nice touch in the early stages of play also proved to be one of the game’s major irritations. At the start you have some margin for error with the gaps in the columns – colliding with them at the top will result in simply knocking your hat off, but once this has happened the collision detection seems to be haphazard at best. there are occasions where it still feels as if the hat is still there so you are penalised during play when you are clearing the gap safely.

As with many of their previous releases, the game suffers on the presentation front as well. As with every title so far from Lightning Game Studios, they have made attrocious use of the PlayStation Mobile SDK User Interface tools and have created a frustrating experience for the gamer. Instead of setting up the entire screen as a “touch to restart” area as every game of this ilk does, they’ve once again opted to use a small on-screen button winning themselves no friends in the process. Visually the game is also incredibly basic. The columns are limited to single colour blocks, the backgrounds don’t fare much better and there is even a glitch with the scores offsetting the background when they are displayed on screen.

Sound is just as dismal with the now expected sub-standard music playing throughout which is one of the regular pieces of stock music that has been heard on multiple titles from the developer and the end “tune” lasts just four seconds and is more reminiscent of an irritating door bell. It’s not difficult to either arrange for original music to be produced for the game or to source some copyright-free music for use and if neither of that were possible, the game would have been better running just with sound effects than music that is offensive to the ears.

Sorry but playing this game didn’t make me feel particularly “Happy” by any stretch of the imagination and I’m sure that anyone who in unfortunate enough to part with any money for this would be less than happy as well. It’s too frustrating to be even remotely playable and the final nail in the coffin for the game is the astonishingly high price. Steer well clear of this and go for something like Trolly Bird or Flappig 3D instead which show just how Flappy Bird clones should be done.

Simon Plumbe

At A Glance