I adore the game Tiny Wings, which was among my first true loves in iPhone gaming. I understand why people enjoy the Angry Birds series, though I've never much cared for it myself. But right now, the big bird-related smartphone question on everybody's lips is "why did everyone love Flappy Bird?"

The aforementioned Flappy Bird (free, formerly at the App Store) soared to the top of the iOS charts before being mysteriously removed by its creator. Perhaps it was the retro graphics, perhaps it was the stupefyingly simple gameplay. Whatever the reason, everyone was playing this game.

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You Will Die
When you play Flappy Bird, you will die. You will die when you nose-dive into the ground. You will die when you plow beak-first into the green Mario-esque pipes that dot the landscape. You will die either from touching the top or bottom of the aforementioned pipes that you must fly through in order to score one point.

Someday, you will die for real, and you'll only do that once. But in this game, you will die many, many times.

To avoid dying, you tap the screen to "flap" (hence the name) and propel yourself upward. But sometimes you will have to grit your teeth, lift your finger from the screen, and endure the nauseatingly fast plunge downward. Why? Because the small breaks in the pipes through which you must pass are placed randomly along the screen's Y-axis.

Each time you pass through a pipe you'll thrill with excitement before dying again, but you'll have earned one point. Sometimes, you might even pass through several pipes and earn several points. My personal best is five, though I have seen people do much, much better.

The screen I see each time I die (and I have seen it many, many times) indicates that I might win medals if my score is high enough. I can also share my score with friends, and view worldwide rankings but in all honesty I'd rather not. Chances are, you will not get a high score playing this game, but you can try.

I did notice that the game was slightly easier to play on a full-size iPad, but it looked and played fine on my iPhone 4s. Weirdly, the game  crashed each time I died when I played the game on my iPhone 5c. A quick re-installation fixed this.