July 15th, 2010.
It had been a daily habit for James—no, Thomas—to check his AdMob dashboard before doing anything else each morning. Even before brushing his teeth. Even before eating.
It was his thermometer for success. His scoreboard.
And today, it brought him a grin so wide it hurt his cheeks.
702,118 downloads.
₱591,032.87 in revenue.
Almost six hundred thousand pesos. All from FlapFlap Hero, a game he coded in one night on a dusty old machine, wearing socks with holes in them and dreaming of revenge against fate.
Now, that same game had gone international.
The Reddit posts never stopped. New memes showed up on 9gag. Bootleg YouTube animations were being uploaded every day. A Vietnamese kid even posted a parody rap song called "Flap Life" that went viral in Southeast Asia.
And the most surreal part?
An email from Google Play itself.
Subject: "Congratulations on Your Success, Espector!"
Body:
Dear Developer,
We've noticed your app "FlapFlap Hero" has reached a significant milestone. We're currently featuring your app on the Top Charts in multiple regions across Southeast Asia. Congratulations!
Best regards,
The Google Play Team
Thomas sat there, reading it again. Then again.
It didn't even feel real.
But it was.
July 20, 2010.
Local game dev groups on Facebook were tagging each other with, "Have you played FlapFlap Hero yet?" Tweets began surfacing in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand with screenshots and rage-posts. Tumblr blogs made pixel fan art. TikTok didn't exist yet—but YouTube Shorts equivalents were emerging. Vloggers started putting the game in their "Top 10 Mobile Games You'll Hate to Love."
Then came the memes. So many memes.
"The bird that ruined my marriage."
"FlapFlap Hero is harder than med school."
"My boss caught me playing in the bathroom. I regret nothing."
July 22 – 904,032 downloads.
₱762,458.16 in revenue.
And climbing.
The dashboard now updated in near real-time. Every refresh added hundreds of pesos to the total. Thousands of players were watching ads. Some were rage quitting. Others were recommending it to friends just so they wouldn't suffer alone.
That evening, Thomas opened his inbox and found something new.
Subject: Interview Request from GameInformer Asia
Body:
Hi Espector, we're writing an article about the breakout success of "FlapFlap Hero." We'd love to interview you for our August issue. It can be via email or voice. Let us know!
He exhaled slowly, then whispered, "Now we're talking."
He typed a polite reply, agreeing to a written interview—no way he was letting anyone connect "James Pascual" to Espector just yet.
Not until he was ready.
July 25, 2010
1,162,019 downloads.
₱1,032,004.70 in revenue.
He crossed the one-million-download milestone while chewing on a pork siomai from the corner stall downstairs.
There was no celebration. No champagne.
Just quiet satisfaction.
July 28, 2010
He dropped ₱50,000 into a small Facebook Ads and Google Ads campaign across the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia—carefully targeting memes, mobile gaming pages, and early online communities.
His copywriting?
"The game everyone loves to hate. Now with MORE pain. Play FlapFlap Hero."
He paired it with a screenshot of someone stuck at 2 points and crying in the comments.
Engagement exploded.
Thomas monitored the metrics like a general overseeing a battle.
Click-through rates were strong.
Cost-per-install was insanely low. The organic virality carried it far beyond the ad spend.
July 30, 2010 – 11:56 PM
Thomas refreshed the AdMob dashboard one more time before midnight.
The page loaded.
2,004,212 downloads.
₱1,793,305.88 total revenue.
His fingers froze.
Then slowly tightened into fists.
Two million.
He stared at the screen in silence, adrenaline humming in his veins.
Then he stood, walked to the mirror, and looked at himself.
Same face. New eyes.
From broken and broke to a millionaire in 42 days.
And this confirmed also that his plan of recreating top games in his past life works here.
And speaking of recreating top games, James already had a game in mind that he'd like to introduce.
It was related to birds again—and not just any birds. These were colorful, angry, explosive, and catapulted through the air into enemy structures with the sole purpose of destruction.
A worldwide sensation in his original timeline. A cultural phenomenon. A game that turned a near-bankrupt studio into a global empire with toys, merchandise, cartoons—even a movie.
Angry Birds.
Only in this timeline, it didn't exist. Rovio wasn't on the map. No pig-popping franchise. No billions of downloads.
Which meant only one thing.
"I'm making it mine," Thomas whispered, a grin curling at the edges of his mouth.
This was his second act. A follow-up to FlapFlap Hero, only bigger, better, and with actual long-term branding in mind. He stood up and walked over to the small whiteboard he'd mounted to the wall using duct tape.
t the top, he scrawled in bold letters:
PROJECT SLINGSHOT
Underneath it, he wrote out bullet points:
Simple, one-touch controls
Satisfying physics-based gameplay
Distinct bird abilities
Charming art style
Dozens of handcrafted levels
No online needed
Light file size
Ad-monetized + premium version
He tapped the marker against the whiteboard thoughtfully. "This game needs to be both accessible and addictive. The kind of game that makes people play just one more level until their battery dies."
He turned back to his desk and opened Unity. This time, he created a fresh project from scratch. No rush, no pressure like FlapFlap Hero. He could take time to do it right.
Step one: The art style.
He wasn't going to rip Angry Birds one-for-one. That would be lazy—and obvious. Instead, he decided to mix things up slightly. The birds? They'd still be round and expressive, but he'd give them more exaggerated personalities, with larger eyes and fluffier feathers. Instead of pigs, he'd use mischievous raccoons stealing fruit from the birds' village.
He chuckled to himself. "No one can be mad at raccoons. But people love knocking them around."
He started sketching using MS Paint and GIMP, since Photoshop was a dream too far for now. He redrew the slingshot, the wooden barricades, and his placeholder raccoons with goofy little bandit masks.
The main bird—he named it Bam-Bam—was red, round, and perpetually scowling. A tanky type. The second bird, Zip, was blue, smaller, and split into three mid-flight. The third? Boomy—a black bird with a short fuse and a devastating explosion after impact.
He couldn't help but laugh. "It's all coming back. Exactly how I remember it."
By mid-afternoon, he had the basic drag-and-launch mechanic working. Touch input registered. The bird launched from the slingshot, arced in the air, and collided with a crude structure made of blocks and platforms.
Physics engine kicked in.
The blocks fell.
The raccoon dummy bounced offscreen.
It worked.
A loud whoop escaped his lips, echoing across the walls of his small apartment.
He took a break to reheat yesterday's leftover fried rice, scarfing it down quickly while watching one of the countless YouTube reaction videos still rolling in for FlapFlap Hero. The attention hadn't died down. In fact, some viewers were speculating on who the anonymous developer "Espector" was.
He muted the video and whispered to himself, "They'll know soon enough."
Once the dishes were stacked in the sink, he returned to his desk. Time to build levels. That was the heart of the game—well-designed, progressively harder puzzles that felt satisfying to crack.
Each level needed to teach the player a new concept. A new trick. A new bird.
He stayed up until 3 AM laying out the first fifteen stages, coding in the logic for bird switching, assigning hit points to blocks, and adding score multipliers.
August 3, 2010
By now, Thomas had something playable.
The UI was ugly, the music was placeholder chiptune, and the text still said "INSERT TITLE HERE" on the splash screen, but it was fun.
Genuinely fun.
"Now comes the hard part," he muttered. "Naming it."
He couldn't call it Angry Birds, obviously. Too on the nose.
After pacing around for an hour and scribbling name ideas in his notebook, he landed on something that sounded just right:
Furious Birds.
It had punch. It had energy. And it told players exactly what to expect.
Next was polishing. He tweaked the bird trajectories to feel snappier. Added particle effects to explosions. Replaced his placeholder raccoons with slightly better-drawn ones using free vector assets as a base. Added a points system, a star rating after each level, and a level select screen.
He even managed to whip up a catchy 8-bit theme song using an old copy of FL Studio James had pirated years ago.
Five days later, he uploaded the game under the same Google Play developer account—Espector, and this one is a paid app, meaning people would have to pay 0.99 dollars to unlock the game. It was a small price to pay in virtually every country.
Then he made a small post on Reddit:
"Hey guys, I made another game. Took a bit longer this time. Still got birds, still got pain. Would love some feedback."
[Download Furious Bird here.]
He let it simmer.
Then he went to sleep.
August 9, 2010
The first notification woke him up.
"You've received a new comment on your post."
Then another.
Then twenty.
He opened Reddit and saw the post had hit the front page of /r/AndroidGaming.
"Just beat level 12. The triple bird is OP."
"THE RACCOONS LAUGH AT YOU WHEN YOU FAIL. WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS OKAY."
"FlapFlap dev back at it again."
Thomas choked on his coffee and laughed until his stomach hurt.
He opened his dashboard.
Downloads: 3,092
Revenue: $3,062.37 (~₱140,000)
Thomas stared at the screen.
A paid app. Nearly ₱140,000 in under 24 hours. No ads. No microtransactions. Just raw, upfront purchases.
"Holy... it's working," he whispered, jaw slack.
FlapFlap Hero was one thing—a chaotic, ad-driven phenomenon that spread like wildfire because it was free and funny. But this? Furious Birds was a product. A full, monetized, polished game. One people were paying for.
No RNG loot boxes. No gacha mechanics. Just birds, slingshots, raccoons, and satisfying destruction.
The kind of simplicity that hooked people.
He refreshed the dashboard.
Downloads: 3,541
Revenue: $3,505.59
₱160,000. In a day.
He leaned back and laughed. Loud, sharp, exhausted laughter. "They're buying it. They're actually buying it!"
He checked Reddit again. The comments were snowballing.
"Bought it without thinking. Totally worth it."
"This dev again?! First FlapFlap, now this. Dude is on a roll."
"I don't usually pay for mobile games. But this one? I paid twice. Installed it on my mom's phone too."
Then came the memes.
A pixel art version of Bam-Bam standing triumphantly over a crying raccoon. Someone even edited the bird's face onto a Tekken fighter.
This wasn't just good. It was branding. Organic, fan-driven marketing. The same thing big studios spent millions trying to manufacture.
And Espector? Espector just existed and people ran with it.
Good thing that James didn't reveal who he was in his profile, otherwise people would know his real name.
Now—he looked at his setup once again. Obviously, this wouldn't keep up in the rapid development of his future plans.
The ancient CRT monitor buzzed like it was dying. The keyboard lagged every few keystrokes. The CPU wheezed if he opened Unity and Chrome at the same time. And don't even mention GIMP—it crashed twice while drawing Boomy's explosion sprite.
This setup got him through FlapFlap Hero and Furious Birds, but the honeymoon was over. If he was going to continue recreating the classics—and eventually innovate past them—he needed better gear. Much better.
He opened a spreadsheet and began listing:
Mid-tier gaming laptop (Unity-friendly): ₱75,000
Drawing tablet (Wacom or Huion): ₱8,000
External HDD: ₱3,500
Backup mid-range Android phone for testing: ₱10,000
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): ₱4,000
Ergonomic chair: ₱5,000
Misc cables, cooling fans, power strips: ₱3,000
Estimated total: ₱108,500.
"This is simple, time to go shopping."