Adding my perspective to Fumple and Manny; basically, we were all in a call slamming down tons of ideas, and someone threw out Flappy Bird. I immediately was like "Oh god no, basically every iteration of Flappy Bird has been done already ... other than like, a dating sim ig." It was an out-of-pocket remark, but people started joking about it. People in-call kept throwing out hilarious joke after hilarious joke, so as the writer I thought, "This idea has a lot of content to work with -- could actually work as a memey VN." I do remember thinking "How does this fit the theme?" realized the reversal of Flappy Bird could be "You want to hit the pipe" ->"You want to ram the pipe" and the idea suddenly didn't seem too silly.
Still, we kept 3 other ideas, ever endeared to this game the more we talked, but it was when our artist joined the call and sent some concepts that we decided to full-send. Once Buff Flappy concept was sent, it was a done deal LOL.
Also so happy to hear you really enjoyed this! Thanks so much!