Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen tweeted that his infamous game would be returning to the App Store, reports Gawker. 

@painfullpacman Yes. But not soon.

— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) March 19, 2014

Nguyen originally took the game down because he claimed it was ruining lives. When the app arrived, people became obsessed with the notoriously difficult game. When Nguyen announced he was removing it from the app store, he recieved disturbing death threats from people on Twitter.

In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this month, Nguyen explained he would have the new version come with a warning telling people to take a break. 

Nguyen didn't specifically mention when the game would return, but there still are quite a few clones sitting in the App Store. It's also unclear if Flappy Bird will even be its name.

SEE ALSO: The creator of Flappy Bird explains why it's so easy to clone his game

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Flappy Bird is coming back to Apple’s App Store, so says the Twitter account of the game’s developer, Dong Nguyen. In answer to Robert @painfulpacman, who asked if Nguyen planned to put Flappy Bird back on the app store, the controversial creator replied, “Yes. But not soon.”

The return of the supposedly addictive game that was at the center of a whirlwind of speculation when it was taken down from the app store by Nguyen – who reportedly made as much as $50,000 per day in advertising revenue– might not happen at all, at least not under the same name.

First, a little Flappy Bird backstory…

Flappy Bird might have remained a popular app floating around the app store, save for the talk that arose surrounding artwork that seemed to exactly replicate that of other games. In the wake of those accusations, Nguyen pulled the game down, claiming the popularity and all that attention was causing him stress. He also claimed the game was too addictive.

No one knows the real reasons, but in the wake of the game going bye-bye, folks began to pay crazy amounts – like $8,000 for a 16GB iPad Mini– for devices that still had the game loaded.

After not speaking out for some time, Nguyen gave a compelling interview to Rolling Stone that disclosed the fact that he was considering letting Flappy Bird fly once more, and with his recent Twitter admission, we now have further proof that the elusive and interesting developer could very well be in the process of bringing Flappy Bird back. The question is: Will Apple relax their rules and allow him to do so?

Getting past Apple’s Terms of Service

As Venture Beat noted, Apple’s rules state that Nguyen gave up his rights to the oh-so-popular Flappy Bird name when he deleted it from the app store. In the meantime, Mobile Media Partners snapped up the name and even has a pending trademark on the name. However, with Nguyen’s saga containing all the rumored drama surrounding this now-you-play-it, now-you-don’t app being so well known, one wonders if his case won’t take a different path and find Apple allowing him to use the name once more.

Time will indeed tell, but there’s no need to feel overly sorry for Nguyen in the wake of the melee. Those who assume that his entire income left when he deleted the game from the app store can rest assured in knowing that those millions of people who downloaded Flappy Bird – including the 10 million who downloaded it in the 22 hours after he warned via Twitter he would remove the game – are still creating tens of thousands of dollars for Nguyen, so writes David Kushner of Rolling Stone.

Therefore, the chain-smoking 28-year-old computer whiz from Vietnam is already busy creating new apps called Kitty Jetpack and Checkonaut, plus a cowboy type of shooter game. Perhaps they’ll all appear in the app store next to Flappy Birds one day – but whether the latter will be attributed to Nguyen or someone else remains to be seen.

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Between Candy Crush Saga, the anticipated return of Flappy Bird, and Threes, it seems safe to say that society doesn't need another game to help pass the time.

Alas, a new number-crunching puzzle game called 2048 seems to be newest sensation in addictive games, CNET reports.

It's relatively similar to Threes, but instead of matching threes, you match any two tiles with the same numbers. The goal is to match up enough tiles to total 2048 before you run out of room. It's Threes on steroids, basically.

2048 is the creation of 19-year-old Italian programmer Gabriele Cirulli. The official game is only available on the Web or via its mobile site, but there are already plenty of clones popping up in the Apple App Store and Google Play. 

Just three days after releasing the game on March 9, thousands of people were playing the game at one moment.

"The amount of man-hours spent playing this game will never be returned to humanity,"Cirulli tweeted.

That's because from the moment you start playing the game, you're hooked.

"I'm addicted!," my mom texted me just two minutes after downloading the app. "Talk to you in the year 2048!!!!" She even went so far to call it the "gateway drug" to Threes.

Check out some gameplay below. 

SEE ALSO: Threes Is Like Candy Crush Saga, But It Teaches You Math

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After "Flappy Bird" came "Splashy Fish" (and countless others).

After "Threes!" came "2048."

And after "2048"? Theres "SF Lyfe," an online clone of "2048" that makes you match San Francisco iconography to rack up points. 

You use your keyboard arrows to match different tiles until you get to the "ultimate SF tile." You can also play the game in your mobile browser by swiping tiles, just like the actual game it's cloning. 

Tiles include pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, pigeons, burritos and artisanal coffee. The pictures are what really make this game more fun than the actual "2048" — who cares about numbers when you can look at pictures of the Sutro Tower?

The game ends when you can't match any more tiles, or if you get the elusive ultimate tile. 

I haven't reached that level yet, but I can only imagine what it's a picture of: perhaps the historic Ferry Building, or possibly the Palace of Fine Arts.

Or, of course, it could also be a picture of a Google bus. 

Check out the game here. 

(Via The Bold Italic)

SEE ALSO: Someone in San Francisco wants to separate techies from 'real San Franciscans'

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For everyone who missed out on the "Flappy Bird" craze, don't worry: there's now a chance to get in on the next wave of addicting games.

100 Balls has soared to the top spot of iTunes free app chart, has already spawned lots of clones, and has not yet been removed from the App Store because of how addictive it is.

According to Geektime, the original 100 Balls is the iOS-only version created by Lithuanian developer Giedrius Tazunas on April 15. Seems like there haven't been any iOS clones yet, but the Android options abound. 

Slovenian developer team FreaXator Games launched an Android version also called 100 Balls on May 5. And several other Android clones have erupted from different developers since then.

You can download the game for free in Apple's App Store, and you can get a clone of the game in Google Play. 

Here's how it works:

Open the app and click start while trying to ignore the banner ad up top. (You can pay $0.99 to remove the ads.)

The eight cups will start rotating around, and you need to get as many of the 100 yellow balls inside the cups as possible. You press on the screen and hold to release the balls. The key here is to get the timing right.

The cups will empty the yellow balls back into the funnel to replenish the stock.

As the rounds progress (inconspicuously in the light gray writing in the center), the cups start to disappear and the remaining ones move faster.

On higher levels, cups change colors, and the balls that fall in them change color too, turning into higher-value balls. The game ends when all of the balls or cups are lost. The longer you remain in the game the more points you get.

This Android clone, which is also called 100 Balls but is from a different developer than the original, looks pretty similar.

SEE ALSO: Recovered photos from 1998 Game Boy show just how far digital photography has come

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Flappy Bird will be returning to the App Store, creator Dong Nguyen tells CNBC's Kelly Evans. Nguyen says it when it does come back, potentially in August, the game will be multi-player. 

In the meantime, Nguyen has been working on other games. He described one to Evans where a man jumps from building to building.

Here are a bunch of tweets from the CNBC team while we track down the video clip of Nguyen's interview with Evans. The game was downloaded 50 million times before Nguyen suddenly yanked it from the App Store for being "too addictive." A new clone was launching every 24 minutes after the hit game was removed, according to Wired.

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen tells @Kelly_Evans that he's bringing back Flappy Birds, but not soon; it'll have a multi-player feature.

— CNBC Social Team (@CNBCSocial) May 14, 2014

Flappy Bird's Dong Nguyen: Flappy Bird is coming back. Multiplayer. August. @CNBC

— Kelly Evans (@Kelly_Evans) May 14, 2014

#FlappyBird creator bringing game back. Tells @Kelly_Evans it will be multi-player, less addictive. #CNBC

— Donna Burton (@DonnaBurton) May 14, 2014

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Appy Pie, a cloud-based company that offers tools for building apps, announced today that its Game Builder platform will be available to anyone for free.

That means that in just 5 minutes, you could build a mobile game of your very own. Not a particularly good or complicated mobile game, but still. You can build a game without knowing the first thing about coding.  

Game Builder offers you six templates to choose from — basketball, casino, tic-tac-toe, a shooter, a "Flappy Bird"-like game, and puzzle — but more choices will be available in the coming months. Since its soft launch in January, more than 500 mobile games have been created, according to VentureBeat.

You can add personal graphics or titles to the game if you want, or you can choose one from a template. 

I decided to make a "Flappy Bird" clone.

I chose a name for the game, and wrote a brief description. I didn't want to blow anyone away with my mad game-making skills, so I chose a premade logo and game icon.  

Then, it asked me to choose a few more settings, like, the type of bird and different pipes. 

Then I played my terrible "Flappy Bird" knockoff. It's just as hard as the original. 

The whole thing took about 5 minutes, but only because I tried my hand at uploading my own files.

Appy Pie will upload your game, no matter how terrible it is, to its servers. If you pay some money, however, you can get the game uploaded to iOS, Android, and even BlackBerry and Windows Phone, according to VentureBeat. And you can even add push notifications and in-app purchases. 

"Appy Pie's driving mission is to make the entire app creation process effortless and enjoyable, where anyone can create a mobile app in 3 easy steps," said Appy Pie founder Abhinav Girdhar.

SEE ALSO: A new mobile game called 'Make It Rain' is bringing in $50,000 a day

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A week ago, over 1.5 million people had downloaded the popular arcade game, Timberman.

Today, that number has ballooned to over 6.7 million downloads.

And yet, for a viral game, Timberman feels remarkably like some classic old-fashioned fun, a bit like something you'd expect to see in the dusty corner of an arcade. Even the hero character, a burly lumberjack, feels a bit familiar as he furiously chops away at a never ending tree trunk, dodging left and right to avoid the descending tree branches.

To figure out the story behind Timberman's success, we talked to the game's creator, developer Pawel Kitajewski, who spoke to us from his home in Poland.

"Timberman is our third app," said Kitajewski, who would occasionally pause to type a word into Google Translate for clarification. "We were making money working in advertising by day. After hours, we were trying our skills at making games."

In the beginning, it wasn't going well. With two failed games under their belt, Kitajewski started from scratch, focusing on who the main character of his next app would be.

"The first thing that I decided to start with was creating my hero. I started to generalize what sort of characters are very overused ... zombies, cowboys," Kitajewski said. "I recall myself watching some American movie, 'Fargo,' I think. There was this scene with giant lumberjack statue. I began to think that this is a character that exists in the minds of people, but isn’t so much explored."

From there, the focus turned to gameplay and animation, which Kitajewski wanted to keep simple at first glance, but addictively difficult to conquer.

"I begin by creating an animation where the lumberjack is chopping down a tree, the tree was falling down, but not left or right," he said. "I remember thinking that this won’t work."

And while the concept of dodging the descending tree branches is vital to Timberman's gameplay today, the rough concept was enough to get work started on the app.

"I sent this to our programmer and asked him how much time it would take to create the mechanics if I provided him with graphics," said Kitajewski. "He said one day or two days. The first version of the game was created in 3 or 4 days. Later, it only took us a month."

After completing Timberman, the app was released to moderate success, reaching #1 in Poland and Russia's App Stores.

"In the beginning, we had the first peak of the game," Kitajewski told us. "It was released on May 8th, and in one week we hit like 50,000 downloads per day. This was really cool. But from that moment, it started to slowly decrease."

Interestingly enough, the team took the app's slowing momentum as a sign that Timberman was likely on its way out.

"Most of the guys in our company were like, 'Okay we had some good times, but it’s decreasing so bye bye, we should work on another title.'"

Kitajewski, however, was hopeful that if Timberman could also top the charts in the Google Play store, the app could have a second wind.

Weeks later, that's exactly what happened.

"The game had a second birth like two weeks ago, and the second big peak was 600,000 downloads daily."

Suddenly, Timberman was at the #1 spot on Apple's App Store, and Kitajewski and his Polish development team were thrust into the spotlight.

"The first day that I heard that the game hit #1 on the U.S. App Store, it was like 'I need to talk to someone in the U.S., because maybe the numbers are false,'" said Kitajewski. "But then we checked our company mailbox, and we’re getting 50 or 100 emails daily with offers to make some toys, or other platforms that would like to appear in our games, or some requests for the different games ... that was the moment I knew something was going on."

For Kitajewski and his team, the added attention meant they could theoretically quit their day jobs in advertising to pursue game development full-time.

"When I heard Timberman was doing well, I bought myself a ticket to India for a vacation," said Kitajewski. "I try to reward myself for when you get those best times. It’s good to reward yourself with some sort of treat. I like traveling, when it comes to creativity. It’s something I learned in advertising. To be creative, you need some new impulses to attack your brain."

Kitajewski and his development team met at school while studying advertising. According to Kitajewski, their studies helped them understand what was required in making a successful app — namely, face-to-face promotion at conventions, and social integration with platforms such as Twitter to help the app spread. 

Timberman's Twitter integration is extremely simple, but it promotes the same sort of competitiveness that caused people to brag about their Flappy Bird scores months ago.

"It was just publishing a screenshot of your score with a text we made in the game saying, 'High score, 1,000 points, can you beat me?' and we linked to the game," Kitajewski said. "There was a pretty big number of those tweets appearing. This was cool because it started to spread pretty fast."

Like Flappy Bird, people keep returning to Timberman, too. Between 2.5 and 2.7 million people boot up the app daily, and those numbers mean Kitajewski and his team are in the process of deciding not just what to work on next, but also who to work with.

"The point is that we would like to develop for a company," Kitajewski said. "From the beginning, our target should be making games."

For now, Kitajewski is biding his time, continuing his advertising work during the day, which he says keeps him from falling prey to the laziness quick wealth can bring.

"I used to work in freelancing, and it was a pretty hard thing," said Kitajewski. "I was getting up from bed whenever I wanted, the days were extending. Something I could do from working at a company from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., I was extending into the whole night because I was taking breaks to watch TV or make food. You need structure. It’s good for people to have this routine. It’s easy to get lazy when you don’t have deadlines."

And while Timberman's success has certainly opened doors, much of the revenue generated from the in-app advertisements and ad-free "Timberman Golden Edition" was already spoken for, at least during the early days.

"We didn't even see this money until now because we had to take care of some administrative and legal issues about the status of our company," said Kitajewski. "Right now, I have minus 5 dollars on my credit card, so I can’t even get a train to work."

That's not to say that Timberman isn't making money, it is, but Kitajewski and his team made it a priority to clear up the outstanding tax and administrative issues first, before focusing on what comes next.

Now that it's been taken care of, Kitajewski is in talks to continue to tweak and optimize the monetization within the app.

"Currently, we’re talking and negotiating with different advertising platforms," said Kitajewski, discussing how Timberman's revenue at the moment comes from both in-app advertisements and the ad-free version, called Timberman Golden Edition.

But Kitajewski and his team aren't sitting still and only relying on Timberman's continued success to keep them afloat.

In a world where apps can fall from the ranks as fast as they rise, Kitajewski knows his team's value isn't only in just one app, but in the understanding of what makes for an addictively fun and successful mobile experience.

"Timberman is our biggest success so far," said Kitajewski. "Our company’s existed for one year. And this a thing that is still open. We will continue to develop Timberman. We will also think up other titles."

Even with new projects and possible partnerships on the horizon, Kitajewski also hints there could still be more Timberman surprises still to come.

"We are also thinking of creating something that involves Timberman, but something bigger," said Kitajewski. "Extend it in some way."

We can't wait.

SEE ALSO: 12 Cool Things You Can Do With Apple TV

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Dong Nguyen, the developer of the insanely popular mobile game "Flappy Bird," has made good on his promise to bring the game back.

But there's a couple of catches: it's a multiplayer game, and, so far, it's only available for the Amazon Fire TV.

There's no word on when a regular Android or iOS version will be released, reports USA Today.

The new game is called "Flappy Bird Family" and promises "incredible new features: Person vs. Person mode, more obstacles, more fun and still very hard."

Nguyen shocked the world last winter when he pulled "Flappy Bird" from the app stores. The free game had gone viral, downloaded 50 million times, and was reportedly making him thousands of dollars a day in advertising. It was easy to play (just keep the bird flying through the obstacles) but hard to play well.

But crazy jokes about people committing violence over the game started circulating on the internet and one day Nguyen tweeted "I cannot take this anymore" and pulled the game from the app stores. Things got so nuts after that that people started tweeting death and suicide threats. Most of them were jokes but Nguyen still felt that he created a game that was "too addictive."

Across all the apps stores, and even the web, clones sprouted like mushrooms and in May, Nguyen promised a new multiplayer version of the game.

Now it's available for Amazon's Fire TV. Using the remote or dedicated video game controller, players push a button instead of tapping a touchscreen.

In the meantime, looks like iPhone gamers have moved on to "100 Balls," another addictive game.

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"Flappy Bird" may not be returning to your phone anytime soon, but its sequel, called "Swing Copters," will soon take its place.

Swing Copters promises to be just as hard (if not harder) than its flapping predecessor, but the premise is simple: Fly as high as you can without hitting the swinging hammers.

Just as Flappy Bird only allowed you to fly up or down, Swing Copters only lets you fly left or right, creating a zig-zagging flight pattern that makes it difficult to avoid each tier of swinging hammers.

Swing Copters is creator Dong Nguyen's first return to mobile gaming since Flappy Bird, a game which Nguyen removed from the App Store after receiving an alarming amount of unwanted attention from press and paparazzi.

You'll be able to pick up Swing Copters for free beginning August 21st, according to TouchArcade. There will also be an option for a one-time purchase of $0.99 to remove all ads from the game.

SEE ALSO: Watch 'Laser Makeup' Transform This Model's Face In Real-Time

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"Flappy Bird" may not be returning to your phone anytime soon, but its sequel, called "Swing Copters," is now here to fill the void.

Swing Copters promises to be just as hard (if not harder) than its flapping predecessor, but the premise is simple: Fly as high as you can without hitting the swinging hammers.

Swing Copters is creator Dong Nguyen's first return to mobile gaming since Flappy Bird, a game which Nguyen removed from the App Store after receiving an alarming amount of unwanted attention from press and paparazzi.

Just as Flappy Bird only allowed you to fly up or down, Swing Copters only lets you fly left or right, creating a zig-zagging flight pattern that makes it difficult to avoid each tier of swinging hammers.

Swing Copters is free for both iPhone and iPad, though there's the option for a one-time purchase of $0.99 to remove all of the ads in the game, according to TouchArcade.

For a better sense of Swing Copters' gameplay, check out the video below, or you can download Swing Copters over at the App Store here.

SEE ALSO: Watch 'Laser Makeup' Transform This Model's Face In Real-Time

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Just because an app is available on the App Store doesn't mean it will stick around.

Apple maintains a tight ship and has strict policies on what apps are allowed to do, but sometimes a few apps slip through the cracks.

From apps that can play old Nintendo games, to the notorious "Flappy Bird," we've collected the most interesting apps that are no longer available — unless you were one of the lucky few who downloaded them before they got yanked.

In the final 24 hours "Flappy Bird" was available, over 10 million people downloaded the addicting game.

Creator Dong Nguyen was bothered by the onslaught of media attention and messages from those addicted to the game. Nguyen later told Rolling Stone he pulled the game because "I'm [the] master of my own fate."

"Nescaline" was a Nintendo emulator that lasted only a couple of hours.

"Nescaline" allowed its users to play full Nintendo games on their iPhone, and even had multitouch support — a novelty for emulators at the time.

"Weed Firm" reached the No. 1 overall spot in the App Store's free section before Apple pulled it.

The game's description asked you to "Follow the story of an expelled botany sophomore Ted Growing as he inherits a growing operation and expands it."

Rovio, the game studio behind the wildly popular "Angry Birds" franchise, has released a new game called "RETRY."

Instead of launching an angry bird, "RETRY" puts you in control of a tiny unwieldy plane as you avoid obstacles and try to make your ways through colorful 8-bit levels.

The gameplay is similar to the viral game "Flappy Bird" and "Copter" in that you need to keep the plane afloat and away from each level's walls and obstacles.

"RETRY" throws a monkey wrench into the mix, however, with the flight mechanics for the plane, which can perform a circular loop or even stall out.

The flight mechanics are tough to get the hang of, and that's where the "RETRY" name makes sense: Rovio has clearly learned from the success of the incredibly difficult "Flappy Bird" and its successor, "Swing Copters."

As you complete levels, you'll see your progress tracked on a colorful 8-bit map. "RETRY" is a freemium game, meaning that while you don't have to pay anything to enjoy it, you can always make an in-app purchase for gold coins to unlock the next level if you're stumped.

"RETRY's" debut follows a rocky time at Rovio. The game studio recently announced it was laying off 130 people, and after profits plunged 52% in fiscal 2013, Rovio announced its CEO, Mikael Hed, would be replaced.

Rovio has made a recent push, however, launching "Angry Birds Stella," a female-centric spinoff of "Angry Birds," and now "RETRY."

You can download "RETRY" for iOS over at the App Store, and for Android at the Google Play store.

SEE ALSO: There's Finally A Real Hoverboard, And You Can Pre-Order It Today For $10,000

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Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg also known as "PewDiePie" is a foul-mouthed Swedish video-game commentator. With over 32 million subscribers he's by far YouTube's biggest star. 

Produced by Devan Joseph

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If you're a fan of the classic game "Frogger," you're going to love "Crossy Road," the new game that's currently ranked ninth in the App Store.

"Crossy Road" is both fun and addictive, and skillfully combines the gameplay of "Frogger" with a beautiful cubic artstyle that makes the game come to life in a charming way.

There are also some notable differences between "Crossy Road" and "Frogger." While "Frogger" features different levels, each with their own safe haven at the end, "Crossy Road" is an endless hopping game where you see how long you can survive. 

"Crossy Road" nails the controls too. Tapping on the screen will make your tiny character hop forward, and swiping to either side or backwards will change direction. It's simple, works well, and makes the game easy to play with one hand, which is one of the reasons "Flappy Bird" took off.

You also view the action in "Crossy Road" differently than in "Frogger," with the game choosing to have you view the game through an offset camera angle rather than directly overhead.

This slight change allows for the game's graphics to truly shine, since you can see everything in 3D rather than 2D, and the shadows make the environments pop with detail.

One of the best parts of "Crossy Road" is the genius way the app makes money.

Rather than including banner ads, the game revolves around the concept of collecting enough coins to purchase a gift for yourself, which you get to redeem by turning the handle on an old-fashioned gumball machine that dispenses a wrapped package.

Each gift contains a new playable character for the game, each with their own animation. The farther you get, the more coins you get, but you can also occasionally choose to watch a 15-second ad to redeem a free gift.

"Crossy Road" has all the ingredients to turn into a viral hit, complete with refreshingly fun gameplay, a gorgeous artstyle, and a compelling rewards system that keeps you coming back for more.

You can see what "Crossy Road" looks like in action in the video below, but to try the game for yourself you can download it for free over at the App Store.

SEE ALSO: You Can Now Get Spotify Premium For Less Than A Dollar

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Google recently released its annual "Year in Search" results, and the viral app "Flappy Bird" was the most popular game of the year.

That means a game that was created in less than three days was searched for more times than "Destiny,"the most expensive video game of all time.

So why was "Flappy Bird" so popular?

Part of the charm of "Flappy Bird" was its retro graphics, simple controls, and sheer difficulty.

Even though the game could be played with only one hand, keeping the tiny bird from bumping into the Mario-esque pipes proved exceptionally difficult, and many people became obsessed with beating their high score and sharing the results on social media sites like Twitter.

Created by Vietnam-based developer Dong Nguyen, "Flappy Bird"'s popularity exploded in February when Nguyen announced he was removing "Flappy Bird" from app stores due to concerns over his own privacy and the addictive nature of the game.

Nguyen made the announcement on Twitter, writing "I'm sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore." At this point, "Flappy Bird" was reportedly bringing in $50,000 a day through the game's banner ads.

Since the game was still playable for all who downloaded the game before it was pulled off the store, downloads of "Flappy Bird" surged during the 22-hour window.

Nguyen removed the game as planned, spawning hordes of "Flappy Bird" clones to be released in the App Store in the subsequent weeks and months that followed. "Flappy Bird" hasn't returned since, though Nguyen eventually made the game available months later exclusively for Amazon's Fire TV.

Nguyen has gone on to design and release a sequel to "Flappy Bird" called "Swing Copters," but no one knows if the world's most viral game will ever return.

SEE ALSO: You Can Now Play The Official Flappy Birds Sequel 'Swing Copters'

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Crossy Road has been a popular mobile game for smartphones and tablets, and its in-game video advertisements are paying off for developer Hipster Whale.

The company has made more than $1m so far from the ads, which players watch to earn virtual coins to spend on new characters for the game, which involves leaping across roads and rivers without getting squashed or sinking.

Not bad work considering that the iOS version of Crossy Road launched in mid-November 2014, with its version for Amazon devices following just before Christmas, and then Android in early January.

The figure was revealed by games technology company Unity, which provides the video ads, in an interview posted on its official blog with Hipster Whale’s Australian co-founders Andy Sum and Matt Hall.

Crossy Road is free to download and play, but makes its money from the video ads and also for in-app purchases when players buy characters, which range from penguins, cats and pigs to wizards and robots. The characters can also be unlocked by spending coins earned from watching the adverts.

"We wanted it to be free, so that everyone has a chance to play," said Hall, citing another indie mobile game, Disco Zoo, as inspiration.

"I played Disco Zoo and thought that video ads were a really good way to earn money without getting into people’s faces. We just needed to figure out a fun reason for players to watch them," he said.

"We didn’t want any consumable purchases, we wanted to do something that everybody could pay a little bit for if they wanted to, but where it wasn’t necessary to keep paying."

Crossy Road was downloaded more than 10 million times from Apple’s App Store in its first month, then another million downloads in its first weekend on Android’s Google Play store in January.

SEE ALSO: The 20 Most Beautiful Apps Of The Year

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The creator of "Flappy Bird" is back with another smartphone game, and it's infuriatingly difficult.

"Swing Copters 2" is the free-to-play sequel to last year's "Swing Copters," which marked creator Dong Nguyen's re-entrance into the gaming world after he infamously pulled "Flappy Bird" from the App Store at the height of its popularity.

While it wasn't the viral sensation that "Flappy Bird" was, "Swing Copters" was equally simple in its gameplay mechanics and possibly more difficult. Now the sequel, which is available now in the App Store, has arrived.

If you played "Flappy Bird," you'll immediately get how to play "Swing Copters 2." The game is basically a vertical version of "Flappy Bird's" retro, side-scrolling level design.

You pilot a cute little 8-bit character with a copter-equipped hat through obstacles by tapping incessantly on the screen, which is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

I tried playing "Swing Copters 2" and died every time before passing the first obstacle. After about 15 minutes, I got my high score to a whopping 1 point, which is a far cry from Dong's high score of 74.

In a FAQ with Dong's Vietnam-based game studio DotGears about the new game, Dong says "Swing Copters 2" is "much more challenging" than its predecessor. Besides the added difficulty, the graphics look improved and there's a new system for unlocking characters with unique abilities, similar to other arcade-style titles like "Crossy Road."

Like Dong's last two mobile games, "Swing Copters 2" has ads. You can pay a $0.99 in-app purchase to remove them and unlock more characters by paying $0.99 again. Otherwise, the characters will be unlocked as you (hopefully) progress through the game.

If you're looking to beat Dong's score, good luck. Even he doesn't know the key to playing his game well. 

"Each player has their style of play," he says on the DotGears website. "Some people repetitively tap on the screen; some people tap slowly and more precisely. I don’t know which one is better."

One of the game's programmers,  Trung Vu, does have some advice: "Make yourself relaxed when you play. Only tap when it is necessary."

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Tech will break your heart.

For every Microsoft Windows, Apple iPhone, Google search bar, or Amazon Kindle, there are so many apps, services, and games that get killed before we're ready to let them go.

Sometimes, like the Flip video camera, these products die because of an acquisition gone awry. Sometimes, like Google Reader, they die simply because not enough people use them. Regardless, they're gone.

Here are 13 times companies broke our hearts by destroying something that lots of people loved.

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The Motorola Razr, first released in 2004, was one of the most popular early cell phones thanks to its slim, svelte form factor. They were discontinued in 2008, amid the rise of the smartphone.

The "Razr" brand was revived in 2011 for a line of Android smartphones, but they never quite achieved the iconic status of the original.

Google Reader was one of the earliest and most popular news-reading services on the web. It died an undignified death in 2013, with Google saying that people weren't using it as much. It's still dearly missed.

When Vietnamese game developer Dong Nguyen launched "Flappy Bird" in 2013, he wasn't expecting it to be the explosive hit that it quickly turned into.

The simple mobile game — which took visual cues from Nintendo's "Super Mario" franchise — cost nothing, and employed an intuitive, addictive mechanic to its gameplay: tap the screen to make a bird bounce in between pipes of varying heights.

The combination of explosive success and being cast into the spotlight actually put off the game's creator — to the point that he pulled it from the iTunes App Store in an effort to regain a level of privacy. 

Since then, Nguyen has re-emerged as a mobile game developer. He released a game in 2014 named "Swing Copters" that took the mechanics of "Flappy Bird" and applied them to a vertical landscape. It was positively received, but nowhere near the level of explosive success that "Flappy Bird" reached.

But now, in 2017, Nguyen has another new mobile game: It's named "Ninja Spinki Challenges!!", and it's nothing like his previous games.

"Ninja Spinki Challenges!!" is made up of several mini-games, all with the goal of training an apprentice ninja in the art of...ninja-ing. It's very tongue-in-cheek. Here's the full description of the game, straight from the iTunes App Store listing:

"Ninja is not an easy business.

Ninja training is just super hard.
6 different games with lots of challenges.

.GEARS which created legendary casual game 'Flappy Bird' and OBOKAIDEM known for 'Green the Planet 2' are filing down the most difficult Ninja challenges to you!"

What that actually means in terms of gameplay is another question altogether. What do you actually do in those six mini-games? Shaun Musgrave at Touch Arcade played the game, and he describes it with more specific wording:

"None of the games are terribly complex, with most of them requiring you dodge incoming objects of various sorts, but they quickly become tough as nails. Not quite 'Flappy Bird' or 'Swing Copters' tough, mind you, but you're probably going to be swearing at your phone just the same."

If that sounds like something you'd be into, the game is out now and costs nothing. Snag it for your iPhone/iPad right here, and your Android device right here.

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