Recently, Vietnam’s mobile gaming industry was in the global spotlight thanks to Flappy Bird which had over 50 million downloads before being taken down by its creator, Dong Nguyen. Flappy Bird highlighted Vietnam’s potential to create world-class games and products. Now the question is: can Vietnamese developers take their game (pun intended) to the next level?
Shortly after being taken down, so many Flappy Bird clones surfaced in the App Store and Play Store that Apple and Google began to reject them. TechinAsia took a closer look at mobile gaming scene in Vietnam.
According to the tech site, Vietnam’s startup and tech space is driven by gaming, particularly VNG along with new entrants like mWork, Appota, ME Corp, Divmob.
New Vietnamese mobile games on the market post-Flappy Bird:
- School Cheater: student must avoid a watchful teacher as they attempt to cheat on their exams.
- 1 Path: a new take on connecting the dots.
- Freaking Math: users are presented with simple math problems but face strict time limits.
Out of these new games, Freaking Math has the most potential to soar to Flappy Bird heights as it boasts simple graphics and gameplay. Users are given a short time to mark basic addition problems as correct or incorrect. After playing Freaking Math a few times, it can be addictive as you definitely know the answers to these basic math problems, but are only given 2 seconds to log a response before getting hit with a “game over.”
TechinAsia talked to Freaking Math’s creator, Bang Nguyen, who was inspired by a game show on VTV and Flappy Bird. Bang saw math as the easiest solution for a question-based game that eliminates language barriers or graphics requiring intensive design.
And this is what Vietnam can teach the global mobile gaming industry: beauty in simplicity.
It remains to be seen whether Flappy Bird was the beginning of a gaming revolution or just a flash in the pan.
