Flappy Bird definitely had an impact on indie game scene. It seems that everyone should create at least one Flappy Bird clone. As a person who reviews games, I've seen about 20 flappy bird clones and I am sure that was just a fraction of all the flappy animals on the market.

Creating a similar game is actually very simple. You can make the whole thing in a matter of hours. I've re-used assets from my previous game Mr. Dandelion's Adventures and I've used AndEngine GLES2-Anchorcenter to create it. I've also used Box2D (the AndEngine's extension), but it was a bit overkill. Nevertheless using Box2D probably saved some time. It was a pleasant programming excercise!

This might sound like an obvious thing to do but...

I have created a slightly modified production APK as hundreds time before. But this time I did not install the APK. I was happy enough with the debug version and the change was really small. However I have changed some libraries and it caused the DEX builder to mess up something. The production APK was crashing with java.lang.ClassNotFoundException in dalvik.system.BaseDexClassLoader.findClass. Awesome - I just wasted great opportunity to get some new players during Christmas and probably lost some of the regular players too.

Moral of the story: Always unistall the debug APK, clean your project, build it from scratch and install the production APK before uploading it to the play store using adb -install myapp.apk.

Christmas. It's an economic phenomenon more than anything else now. A bookstore near my home used to make about 10 times more money during December than it did any other month. The owner said that it's the only reason he keeps the store. 

The game industry is definitely influenced by Christmas as well. Just think how many people are going to find a new Android phone under the Christmas tree.

And here we are. Game developers who can make a use of it. As I have announced on Facebook, Google+ and both AndEngine and Libgdx forums, I was offering a Christmas promotion for all games that feature at least something Christmasy to see the Christmas effect. It even included a free 125x125 button ad on this page.

But nobody wanted to use this promo so I had to update my own game for Christmas. Mr. Dandelion is actually ideal for this, because it has flatlined. The installs and uninstalls are the same. Let's see how Christmas in Google Play Store change it.

Stay tuned for the results and Merry Christmas to you all from Mr. Dandelion!