This addictive iOS game is made entirely of emoji

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What it says on the tin. Photo: Ivan Grachyov
What it says on the tin. Photo: Ivan Grachyov

Many would-be game designers never make their games a reality because they don’t possess the artistic chops to create the graphics their game depends upon. But not being able to draw didn’t stop Ivan Grachyov, a computer science student at Moscow State University, and the resulting game might just be the next Flappy Bird.

The Russian designer’s creation? Emoji Cosmos, a game made of nothing but emoji!

Available for free on the iOS App Store, Emoji Cosmos plays something like a cross between Flappy Bird and Galaga.

You play a rocket ship blasting off into space after its been loaded up with emoji passengers. As you might guess, the obstacles are emoji too: specifically, the emoji “moon with a face.” And when you hit one, you blow up into the emoji fireworks. Even the game’s UI is emoji-based!

According to Grachyov, the idea for using emoji as graphics was not just to bypass the need to find an artist, but because he thought the icons “definitely have their own charms.” The prototype of the game only took him two weeks to make, and was made in Swift, Apple’s new programming language.

Time will tell if Emoji Cosmos turns out to be the new Flappy Bird, although it’s certainly devilishly hard and addictive when you get into it. I still haven’t managed to top 31 emoji avoided. How high can you score?

Source: iTunes
Via: Wired

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