Flappy Bird

Victory is just a root away — and anyone can cheat at Flappy Bird.

God I hate this game. Flappy Bird is simple, and you can easily cheat at Flappy Bird. I just want it to be done so it can go away. Hats off to the developer who figured out how to make a few dollars from endless frustration and a couple hours of coding, but Flappy Bird needs to die.

It hit me this afternoon — the best way to stop playing a game is to cheat so hard you'll never be able to match the result by normal means. After that, you never want to play again and don't care when everyone else talks abut playing it.

Luckily, Flappy Bird is as easy to cheat at as it is to die flapping.

Got Root?

You need Root to cheat at Flappy Bird

Like most things that break and ruin other things on Android, you need to be rooted to do this. So go hit the forums and see how to root your phone or tablet so you can beat Flappy Bird. The rest is easy as pie.

Install Flappy Bird if you haven't. You'll find a link at the top of this post. Then install ES File Explorer. Any root aware file explorer will work, but ES is free and the one everybody seems to like best. Just shut up and install it.

  • Open Flappy Bird and play at least one time. Probably the only time you'll want to play. God I hate this game.
  • Close it. Actually go to your app multitasking space and swipe it away. 
  • Open ES File Explorer, and swipe right to open the left-side menu. Tap the "Tools" line item and make sure "Root Explorer" is turned on.
  • Then tap the "Local" line item, and choose "Device." This puts you in the root of the System, and it's where you need to start.
  • Swipe the left menu away, and tap the folder named "data". Look for another folder also named "data" and tap to open it.
  • Scroll down to find the folder named "com.dotgears.flappy" and open it.
  • Open the "shared_prefs" folder, and tap the FlappyBird.xml file. You'll get a choice of ways to open it, choose ES Note Editor.
  • Tap the three dots in the upper right, and choose Edit.
  • The fourth line is what you need to change. Set the <int name="score" value ="your_shitty_score" /> to something like <int name="score" value ="999999" />. Don't boher trying to set a low number to try and fool anyone, because we all know that every score higher than 20 is totally a cheat. Go big or go home, son.
  • When you're done changing it, hit the back arrow in the upper left and save the file when prompted.
  • Close ES File Explorer and open Flappy Bird. Play until you die, and you'll see your new high score.
  • Take a screenshot and share with all your friends and on Google+ and Twitter, so people know you beat this awful game and can now move on to more fun things, like passing kidney stones or watching paint dry.