Every now and then comes a little game that managed to win the heart of millions of players from all around the world. In this case, it was the turn of a game called ‘Flying Face‘, developed by Mikhail Murtazin, also known by its name ‘dvoshansky’.
Insane Popularity
As of the time of writing, this ‘Flappy Bird’-inspired game has reached a mind-blowing 1,019,377,188 views on Instagram based on statistics previously shared by Mikhail in Spark AR community.
For those who just woke up to this news, we are not talking about a regular mobile game, one that you download from the App Store or Google Play, but an interactive Instagram effect or filter. An IG filter is a little program that utilizes Spark AR framework that allows developers to make camera effects and AR content that works within the Instagram camera app.
However, because those effects support interactive content, Spark AR Studio developers used them to create games and ‘Flying Face’ is one of them.
Flying Face is definitely one of the most popular Instagram filters ever created and definitely, the most popular IG game ever created using Spark AR Studio. Even as I write these lines I can’t get how popular this game has become.
The game continues to grow and reach more countries and more areas around the world as the word continues to spread and more people are aware of it.
I remember when I first post a tweet about it, not many people paid attention, I got like 1 like. Back then I knew that it has a great chance to succeed, but I didn’t know that it’s going to be so popular and that it’s going to trend like crazy.
Flappy Bird Resemblance
It’s worth mentioning that this Flappy Bird style Inta game isn’t the first game filter out there, but it was the one that gains massive popularity, especially in Malaysia and Singapore, where local celebrities help spread the word about it.
Flappy Bird, the original game, was initially released on May 24, 2013, by a Vietnamese developer called Dong Nguyen who worked for a company named dotGears. The game was available for iOS and Android and later pulled out by the developer. Flappy Bird was a very popular mobile game that conquered the market by storm. Its insane difficulty made people continue playing it and trying their best to break their own high score and share their achievement on social networks and YouTube.
It felt like a gaming Olympics, where the only game that was featured there was Flappy Bird. Everyone wanted to get better and better and break the top highscore records.
This of course also helped Flying Face get good momentum, as the gameplay itself was already familiar and loved by many people from all around the world. However, Flying Face brought something new, something refreshing over the original formula.
The game also features 2-player local gameplay. Two users can play on the same phone, each player has its own bird to control. If one player fails, the other one can continue. Also, the faces of the players appear as the bird’s face, which is funny especially considering the fact that facial movements are also seen on the replicated face.
Eye Blinking Game Controls
Flying Face Instagram game was designed to be played with eye blinking rather than tapping on the screen. It’s worth mentioning that Spark AR Studio was designed from the ground up with face detection support. So having the game played using blinking controls was something that didn’t require a lot of work, the functionality was already built into the client engine.
Let’s take a look at some Flying Face gameplay video, created by AR Critic YouTube user.
To play the game, users need to blink with their eye or both eyes. Winking will make the bird fly a little bit upwards on the Y-axis as gravity continues to pull it downwards. Due to gravity, players need to continuously blink during gameplay in order to maintain altitude. Not just that, they need to carefully maneuver the bird through endless incoming obstacles.
The game has no end, you need to survive as long as possible and at the end, you get a score based on how many obstacles you were able to dodge. You have only one life, if you intersect with an obstacle or go out of bounds it’s game over.
Flying Face IG Stories
One of the great things about playing and sharing a Flying Face Instagram gameplay is that first, your face is always in the center of the frame, and your face is essentially a part of the gameplay experience itself. The level of the game is augmented, positioned on top of the camera’s video stream, the front-facing camera, so the user’s face is the background of the game.
Due to this fact, many people enjoy sharing the gameplay as they enjoy sharing selfie photos and videos. Usually, when you look at gameplay videos, you don’t see the player, unless that user stream or use a picture-in-picture app that overlays the front-facing camera video stream on top of the gameplay. People do that when they record gameplay videos for YouTube. It makes the viewing experience more exciting, same here.
Instagram Stories is a great way to share Flying Face gameplay videos. It’s very easy to do. Users can use third-party screen recording apps, but this functionality is built into Instagram. Just tap and hold to record a video while using any Instagram effect, in this case, Flying Face Instagram game. People use this to share their favorite moments, funny moments, high score, etc.
This further contributed to the vitality of the game and soon enough, you have tons of videos and IG stories all over the place of people from all around the world playing this amazing blinking Flappy Bird Instagram game.
I’m sure Dovshansky enjoyed seeing all those faces of all these people from all around the world playing your game, it’s a great feeling for a developer when other people use their game, let alone seeing their faces as they do so.
Dvoshansky on Instagram Has Over 3-Million Followers
From a few hundred to more than 3-million followers and growing, all that in just two weeks is absolutely an unheard of achievement, at least in the Spark AR community. He is by far the most popular Spark AR creator out there.
Mikhail Murtazin was also very active and live streamed himself playing and answered questions from the community. He never believed that in one week he would have 1 million followers, and that number just kept growing and growing.
This is a single developer, keep that in mind, not a company. A single developer who developed that little games called Flying Face and became an Internet phenomenon in a few days and now after two weeks since the game was released, it doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Once it reaches the west, it will continue to grow even further. Right now most of the users are from Asian countries, but this is about to change.
Instagram Games Are Awesome!
I’m sure this will motivate many Spark AR Studio developers to focus their effort on making cool games for Instagram after they have seen that immense potential.
Flying Face is a motivator and an inspiring achievement. I hope that Instagram will embed more game-related feature to its Spark AR platform, because as right now it’s kind of limiting. Even with those limitations, Spark AR creators were able to create amazing little games.
How to get Flying Face Blinking Game?
Flying Face Instagram game is available for free and all you have to do is to install the Instagram app on your Android or iOS smartphone. The next thing is to follow Dvoshansky (IG: @dvoshansky) on Instagram. This will unlock the filter and it will be downloaded automatically to your filter drawer for you to use. Then search for the game’s icon and start playing the game.
Keep in mind that as of the time of writing this review, Instagram is having some issues. This means that some people have their filters removed, they can’t find Flying Face game even after following dvoshansky and other issues. I hope that Instagram will solve those issues soon so everyone would be able to play this game.
Flying Face is an amazing Instagram filter game and I recommend everyone to try it out, even if you are not a fan of the original Flappy Bird game. Have fun and thanks for reading my review.