Hundreds of clones of Swing Copters, the new game from the creator of smash-hit game Flappy Bird, have appeared on the Google Play Store, beating even the official game to its launch on Thursday.

Swing Copters from .Gears, the studio operated by Vietnam-based Dong Nguyen, only appeared on Thursday after a short video showing how it would work appeared on YouTube on Monday.

But just as Flappy Bird inspired hundreds of clones, so now Flappy Copters has hundreds of games on the Play Store copying not only its idea – a helicopter trying to navigate past hammers to get through openings – but also the artwork.

Some brazen cloners have even released copies of the game using Nguyen’s name, making it confusing to shoppers looking for the real thing.

There are so many clones that the official Swing Copters game only appears 63rd in a search on Google’s official Play store for “Swing Copters”.

The game has also been released on Apple’s App Store - where there are so far no “clones”.

‘2 in Swing Copters = 200 in Flappy bird’

Swing Copters takes the same basic idea of flying through small gaps, but turns it on its head so players have to guide a character up through gates guarded by swinging hammers rather than horizontally through pipes.

So far the official version has received broadly positive reviews, with players primarily concerned with just how incredibly hard it is to navigate past each gate, each of which scores a point. In Flappy Bird, released in May 2013, the player had to guide a bird up or down through a horizontal gate to score a point.

“A 2 in Swing Copters = 200 in Flappy bird ... Just sayin,” said Greg Wong in a review.

Another, Daniel Morial said, “if you think Flappy Bird is the most frustrating game for you, try this out and prepare your warranty.”

Reviews for the clones aren’t quite so positive, complaining of bugs and disruptive ads, and with very few even realising that they aren’t the real deal.

“What the heck? Flappy Bird is great and I still play it. This game is utter crap,” Justin Ramsey said definitively in one review of a clone that appears high up the search rankings.

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