[Laminar]

2048

Best score so far is 16172. Haven't gotten that elusive 2048 tile yet.

[ajprice]

Oh I like this . There is a similar iOS/Android game called Threes. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/thre...779157948?mt=8

[BLAZE_MkIV]

That snowballs quickly. 1240 on my first attempt. May bookmark for non-work hours

[andi*pandi]

I did better on my first attempt then got progressively worse. I think trying to find a strategy backfired.

[ajprice]

It works on my iPhone too, swiping up/down/left/right.

[Laminar]

Keep your biggest number trapped in a corner. Keep that row 4-wide so that you can switch back and forth without moving it out of the corner. Surrounding small numbers with big numbers wastes spaces, so try and keep all of the small number in the same area.

[besson3c]

The wife plays this game a lot, I think her high score was in the 21000s...

[P]

Finally! I won (created a 2048 tile) with 20328. Followed Laminar's strategy above and eventually decided to develop it a bit:

* Use the bottom right corner for the big tile. This is because of the way the tiles merge: If you have three tiles in a row, the high number ends up to the right/down.
* As you get to higher numbers, dedicate the tile next to the high tile for the next highest tile. Then the tile after that, and so on in a snake upwards, so you can always merge up the bigger numbers. In practice the plan will break down eventually as new tiles appear, but if you can keep the four biggest tiles on the bottom row, you have already made a big improvement.

[Laminar]

I still haven't figured out how it decides if the new tile will be 2 or 4, I'm sure it's simple.

[P]

I thought it was random, but then it seems to be related to if you matched a tile the last turn or so - if you've gone a couple of turns without matching, you get a 4.

[andi*pandi]

I thought it was related to how far along you are. I was hoping to start seeing 8s being dropped.

I let my 6 yr old have a go at this last night. She almost beat my score!

[P]

There are boring people making genetic algorithms to solve this.They hacked away the max of 2048 so you can match 2x2048 into 4096 etc, and someone apparently got to 16384.

Beat it again just now, 23680 I think it was.

[ajprice]

Just got 10,436 and the 1024 tile.

[Waragainstsleep]

2048: Doctor Who Edition

[ajprice]

Liking the Doctor who version, I'm up to one Eccleston. A bunch of other versions Six new versions of puzzle game 2048 that you have to try | City A.M.

[andi*pandi]

Hmm, did slightly better at the doctor who version. Luck?

[Laminar]

Finally got the magical 2048 tile on mobile, score was 20968.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Keep your biggest number trapped in a corner. Keep that row 4-wide so that you can switch back and forth without moving it out of the corner. Surrounding small numbers with big numbers wastes spaces, so try and keep all of the small number in the same area.

I found limiting most of my moves to up/right got my by far the furthest. Many times I'd combine 3 tiles at once using this combo.

[ort888]

Not that it really matters, but 2048 is a quickie knockoff of the game Threes.

It's generated a fair bit of controversy, in that a free game that a 19 year old made in a weekend has managed to become more popular than the game professional designers spent months and months designing, crafting and tweaking.

[Laminar]

This kind of thing fascinates me, similar to Flappy Bird. There's nothing especially obviously brilliant about the concept. There's no magical killer game mechanic that sets it apart. There's no fancy graphics or incredible storyline. And there are thousands of other free time-waster games out there. Why this one? Why did it get picked above all of the others to go viral and become so popular?

[The Final Dakar]

The mechanics are simple, the game plays differently each time, and its a brain teaser. Seems obvious enough to me.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

The mechanics are simple, the game plays differently each time, and its a brain teaser. Seems obvious enough to me.

There aren't multitudes of those available on the App store?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

There aren't multitudes of those available on the App store?

Probably not the brain teaser part, no.

[Laminar]

And how about Flappy Bird? There are a thousand "how far can you get by mashing the screen" games.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

And how about Flappy Bird? There are a thousand "how far can you get by mashing the screen" games.

I wouldn't put flappy bird in the same category. It's repetitive and not a brain teaser. I know its popular, but it has no appeal to me. It's different.

[Laminar]

It was making the author $50,000 per day.

[The Final Dakar]

...and?

[Laminar]

My original question was simply "Why do some games make it big?" I stumbled on an article in The New Yorker today that talks a bit about that.

Stories of sudden indie-game riches are appealing. They have a fairy-tale quality, the moral of which is often, “Work hard and you will prevail” (even though this kind of overnight success is often the result of an un-replicable recipe involving privilege, education, talent, toil, and timing).

Like I said before - there was nothing magical about Flappy Bird, but something strange happened and it got huge.

[The Final Dakar]

Well I was giving my opinion in the case 2048, not Flappy Bird.

[Laminar]

NOTED. allcaps

[ort888]

I've got an idea for an even better game. Mine is called 2049.

[The Final Dakar]

Miner 2049er - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Jawbone54]

This has already been mentioned, but this game completely ripped off Threes, which IMHO was a much better thought-out and constructed game, especially with the sound on.

2048 is a shameless ripoff. Sucks for the makers of Threes.

The developer's blog post: The Rip-offs & Making Our Original Game

It’s all in good fun, at least we’d like to think so, but try as our logical brains might, we still got the same “cloning feeling". Especially when people called Threes, a game we poured over for nearly a year and a half, a clone of 2048. Others rifled off that they thought 2048 was a better game than Threes. That all stung pretty bad. We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. And obviously, Threes is the reason 2048 exists.

[andi*pandi]

really interesting post, I like seeing the progression of the game, ideas tossed around. Argyle monsters!

[The Final Dakar]

Finally did it. Didn't even realize I was close.

[Laminar]

[turtle777]

LOL

Who wants to try

-t

[Laminar]

[turtle777]

Ha. Finally did it. Very addictive.

-t

[Laminar]

9007199254740992

[andi*pandi]

Well, in that version I at least made it to 2048!

[Ghoser777]

Dear lord, that's 2^53. Just for some reference:

To get to 4, you need 2 Two blocks
To get to 8, you need 4 Two blocks
To get to 16, you need 8 Two blocks ( a pretty obvious pattern)

So you would need to combine 2^52 Two blocks to reach that number.

It would take you over 142 million years to just count by 2's to reach that number if you added a 2 every second.

[turtle777]

Damn, you mean, I won't be able to finish this in my lifetime ?

Rats....

-t

[Laminar]

2048 + Flappy Bird

Flappy 2048

[turtle777]

-t

[ajprice]

There's a free iOS app version of this now. It has a time trial game, the tiles spawn every few seconds, game over when the board is full.