This may be buried in the comments and you will never see it, but thank you very much Gabriele. Your game helped me in a very weird circumstance.
I was afraid of flying, specially on the takeoff and landing (and turbulence as well, ha). So I read somewhere that if I focused on something else, it would help me. So for the past years, I played 2048 during takeoff and landing, and it worked. It helped me to focus on something else, not the airplane, and I started to enjoying more my trips.
Now I don't need to do it anymore, but just for the experience I still do it when I fly. So thank you for helping me with my fear!
TypeScript was fairly new at that time and to learn it, I ported 2048 to TypeScript. It was fun!
Fast forward a couple of years, I was debugging an issue with a react component and glanced over the .d.ts of react. I was quite surprised when I saw that my name was in them. I never contributed to react's types myself.
Congrats on the 10 year anniversary, though honestly I think having tried your new 2048 I'll go back to the classic build. It might just be the hours I've poured into the original but it feels faster without the additional animation. But still a lot of good work there and I'm wishing you the best of luck.
As for the argument about Threes!, I have to say that I've generally found 2048 to be a much more fun game; the full-screen sliding and the lack of the 1+2 mechanic makes things move much faster, which for me is a priority. That's definitely personal taste, but I hate the vitriol that comes up on the topic.
My favorite 2048 clone by far is https://ashervollmer.github.io/2048/128.html, which is just a 3x3 2048 that only spawns 2. I like it because it is possible to achieve total victory, a perfect game fills the board with a a final score of 7172.
Wow, has it already been ten years? I also wrote a clone of 2048 back then (https://github.com/nieware/gofusion), using Go and a QML-based UI, for a contest, and (to my astonishment) actually won the first prize, which consisted of a Nexus 7 tablet (which served me well for several years) and a rare original vinyl Gopher figurine (which is still sitting on my desk looking at me serenely with its googly eyes while I type this).
You know how the distribution of 2-value vs 4-value for new tiles is a weighted random function? And sometimes you get an unlikely 4 that really screw you over? Have you thought about adding a mode which always creates the worst option of the 2?
You could call it “God does play dice with the universe. They're loaded and he hates you.”
I've opened the game without reading the post. When I've hovered over the crown and saw the prime stuff I thought it was some kinda' joke or parody. Turns out it isn't. Which I think is even funnier in some meta/state-of-the-things-today way. As there's nothing left but laugh at the absurdity of our reality.
It is easy to underestimate any individual's contribution to society, especially if it can be (ridiculously) trivialized as "just a mindless game" (that hurt to type).
2048 has impacted our species. Seriously.
I can assure you from an objective, subjective, authoritative, personal, and collective position: your game has saved many people their sanity, entertained millions, saved/wasted billions, inspired untold people into math, web dev, and game design.
But most importantly, people didn't quit "mindless/thankless/frustrating/demeaning" jobs because their mind was _just_ adequately stimulated by your creation to continue to justify coming to work the next day.
Not demanding enough to command full attention (until we get a 4096, then nothing else matters), but 'choring' enough (in the most charitable sense) to keep people from finding a more or less demanding time-fill, likely compromising their jobs.
Jobs that help others, in an exponential way, sometimes.
Even if this was an isolated incident, I can tell you, you will forever be top 5 (hyper) viral games by a solo developer.
If a butterfly can cause a hurricane, 2048 could just as easily be the reason we survive the next filter, for all we know.
You helped me help others help others. And you deserve to know that.
BTW: I always blocked your ads (no offense, just cognitive stuff).
"Powerups with Amazon Prime" sounds like the famous bug report that grep (I think) should search on Amazon if it doesn't find the string locally, which was submitted IIRC in protest at the Ubuntu "lens" doing just that.
For those who haven't heard of Threes, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the original game that 1024, 2048 etc were cloned from (and I think it's still the best by far). Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threes#Legacy
Thank you for your comment. I wanted to add that credit should indeed be given where it's due and that while I didn’t mention Threes in my original post, it has played a significant role in 2048’s existence. Threes is credited on the play2048.co site (and now also on GitHub), and I’ve always tried to acknowledge its influence.
That said, I think there’s a balance to strike. As I mentioned before, I created 2048 before I became aware of Threes, and while it’s important to credit inspiration, I’m not convinced that every creative project needs to trace back every indirect influence. 2048 began as a small experiment without any intent of gaining popularity, and it grew into something distinct, shaped by the viral spread and its community of its open-source variations.
I understand the value of recognizing origins, but I also believe 2048 has developed its own identity over time. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m always open to improving where needed. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I feel like this is a bit misleading. You say you weren’t aware of Threes at all when you made 2048, which may be technically true, but then you should probably clarify that 2048 was a clone of 1024 which was a clone of Threes. And this all happened within around a month of when Threes released… to the point where many people started accusing Threes of being a clone of 2048.
As Threes was getting famous I bought it and tried a bit, but it didn't really stick.
It's with 2048 that I actually got hooked, it felt like a more natural and seamless game to play. I think it's the simplicity (no cuteness, no craftyness) that helps abstract the game, and of course dealing with powers of two makes it all the more natural. It felt a lot easier to get in and out of the game, be it for 30 sec to check the train station or 4 hours until lunch break.
I feel like Threes was the cute and whimsical game, while 2048 could probably become the classic game, in the same kind of spot as Tetris.
While it's unfortunate that the Threes team didn't receive a proper recognition, I believe the popularity of 2048 mainly comes from the fact that it can be, in some sense, "finished" unlike Threes. Yes, you can continue after 2048, but it was a good milestone that is initially hard but can be done relatively easily once you've got the hang of it. The clear milestone makes every game play much more disposable unlike Threes, even though you can surely continue even after that. (I did play Threes a bit before 2048 got popular and realized this in retrospect.) The same principle applies to more recent Suika Game and I still find it amusing that the only major change for both was the title.
Hmm, I'd guess that difference isn't significant for the vast majority of players. And for those that care, the greater depth of Threes is surely an advantage.
I think 2048 became more popular because it was a) on the web, and b) free, whereas Threes was only on the iPhone and cost a few bucks.
Oh, and c) the OP, to give him his due credit, did a really nice job with it! It had the same kind of simplicity and virality as Wordle.
Suika Game has the same core mechanic (and many clones) but still represents a fundamentally different game. The gameplay is not even in the same category, as it involves some kind of physical simulation.
... or did you mean that Suika Game itself wasn't the original game with the falling-circles mechanic?
>2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (that you'll see hidden in the emails below). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. We’d wager most people that have been able to score a 768 or even a 384 in Threes would be able to do the same using the fabled “corner strategy”. You probably could too! Just try tapping “up” then “right” in alternating order until you can’t move. Then press left. You may not get to a 2048, but you might just see your highest score ever.
>When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken.
From my experience, this greatly overstates the "exploit". In 2048 you get to maybe 128 this way typically before you can't move up/right any more, then you have to start thinking after the left press. Basically whenever you slide away from the "preferred" corner, supposing your plan is to slide back promptly, there's always a chance that a random spawn gets in your way and complicates the plan. Getting to 2048 on the first try doesn't sound like a modal experience at all. (Of course, most new 2048 players won't have had the experience of developing Threes first.)
For that matter, the developer talks about how rare it is to see a 6144, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that reaching a 4096 in 2048 is far more difficult than reaching 2048.
At any rate, it's not at all immediately clear why having the player join 1+2 first before making blocks of 3*2^n, should noticeably improve the gameplay over having only powers of two. So IMO it's not that the gameplay of 2048 is fundamentally less interesting; the implementation just sets a lower standard.
(Though for what it's worth, I've wondered how it might go with the Fibonacci sequence - allowing 1s to merge either with 2s or other 1s.)
You just have to play Threes for a few hours and it becomes obvious it’s a much more interesting and deep game than 2048. Of all the things that can be debated about this situation, that feels like the biggest stretch of all.
I don't mean to "debate" the depth of Threes (having not played it), only to say that it isn't obvious from a description. On the other side of the equation, 2048 is clearly interesting enough to have sold (and, from what I can tell, marketed by word of mouth), and its players would seem to disagree with the Threes author that 2048 is "a broken game". The corner shake might seem like a tedious but powerful strategy; but it doesn't come anywhere close to trivializing the object of the game, and this is a casual time-waster anyway.
2048 might well have won out for its simplicity (although personally I think the audio had a lot to do with it). Screenshots of Threes development (from the page linked in the post I quoted) imply that for quite a while it allowed for making numbers of any 2^x*3^y form, and earlier versions of the game must have tried even more complex rules - even larger prime numbers like 79 show up. Eventually this reduced to only numbers of the form 2^x*3 (as well as 1 and 2). To me that looks like a strange left-over irregularity, even if it does improve gameplay.
(After reading the rest of the thread, I think I regret replying at all.)
Hasn't 2048 always been free? When comparing a paid game with a clone that's free (or even "free-to-play with obnoxious ads and lootbox mechanics" not that 2048 is that) the latter will usually become more popular, and that certainly happened here.
I am not sure how I feel about it. I certainly don't believe anyone should be able to legally own an idea like "sliding tile number games based on powers of 2 with or without being multiplied by 3" but I also don't have a lot of respect for those who, lacking an original idea, resort to cloning someone else's creative work (or in 2048's case, I guess, cloning another clone). So I guess I have no problem with them existing, but don't feel any desire to give them accolades or to play their game.
you're right, it's not an "exploit"; it is literally the gameplay. go watch anyone play 2048 for more than 9 seconds and then try to tell me that isn't the case...
and why is the fact that the difference between threes and 2048 "not immediately obvious" salient... at all? what is it even supposed to mean? i'm not so great at number theory... that doesn't make me think that all those people are gods among humans. same with the obverse: i am really good at geometry, so honestly are we sure that the ancient greeks were even good at math? it's not immediately obvious to me that geometry even is math. they didn't even have calculators for god's sake!
Threes was (I believe) the first iOS game I actually paid money for. You could tell that the author was a true craftsperson who really cared about every detail of the product. It always felt unjust that the clones got all the attention, and now the nostalgia.
Threes would have worked fine as a free web game if they prioritized attention, but they chose to make it an iOS only paid app, presumably because they preferred making money over gaining attention. That's a very reasonable tradeoff in my book, I'd rather have money in pocket than stranger's upvotes.
I still play Threes regularly. It’s super accessible but still remains challenging after years of play. I even occasionally still set a new high score.
I don't understand the peeve people have about mentioning Threes all the time. Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever? The vitriol in some of the comments here are quite weird to me.
It's also dishonest to label 2048 as a clone. Personally I never cared much for Threes, and same I guess with my parents etc which all got hooked for a while on 2048. 2048 strikes a good balance on being accessible and challenging, most people don't want it more complicated or deeper.
If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously. Instead, many people act as if 2048 was a slight on Threes somehow, stealing their thunder. I actually bought Threes based on all the comments back then, but didn't really like it. Too cutesy, and too challenging when I just wanted to mindlessly swipe.
> Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
Well the great differentiator between puzzle games is the idea of the playing mechanism. The great differentiator between FPS is implementation. If I make an FPS, I didn’t really steal from Doom because the idea is pretty obvious. But if I make a sliding game that’s very similar to 2048, you might say I stole the idea. It’s like with patents, subjectively the mechanism of a FPS shouldn’t be patentable to me, but three or 2048 might be.
Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
It's a fair question, but Doom and Quake were both very famous and successful.
What sticks in my craw a bit with Threes is that the clones came out really fast, and 2048 in particular because much more famous and successful, so Threes never really got the chance to shine as much as it deserved (except when die-hard fans like me keep coming out of the woodwork to hype it, as you say). And I still think Threes has a much better and deeper game design than any of the clones!
If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
It's not that I resent the success of 2048 -- to the contrary, the OP did a great job with it and the success is deserved. But I assume that many people who have heard of 2048 have not heard of Threes, and I'd like them to try it, because it's great.
>If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
Why? It's not a job, or even a fun hobby, to try and ensure forgotten things get the recognition they deserve.
I'm surprised it's hard to understand! I see it as like recommending a cult movie or book to people -- that's not an unusual thing to do, right? Like when you're talking about time travel movies and there's always that one person who pops up and says "OK, but have you seen Primer? You should see Primer!"
>If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously.
This. I've never heard anyone mention Threes outside of a sub discussion about 2048. For all the people here that claim to love it, it has had very little impact outside of being discussed as being similar to, or a precursor of, 2048.
Congratulations on creating such a wonderful game. My wife still plays it, I would claim, daily. I would claim it's part of her evening relaxation :)
I will most certainly forward your new developments to her and also try it myself. Good luck with your new job.
383,392 points on the first try, using the new powerups. At that point I had a 16384, 8192, 4096, 2048, 1024, 256 and two 128's, but getting that extra 512 and then successfully folding the tiles into a 32768 likely wouldn't have been feasible, even if I had had more luck. I think this was enough for me for a while =D
Here are the threads I could find with 20 or more comments. Smaller threads are listed in a collapsed reply. These are in chronological order for a change:
This feels so much snappier than the original. I don't know if I'd use the powerups, because usually I play 2048 mindlessly and when I don't really want to think too much, but I might find myself pleasantly surprised in the future.
Your game has inspired me back then to create a game on quickly finding isomorphic graphs. Since then, I haven't created any other game in 10 years. So thank you for a powerful stimulus!
Sometimes I have trouble listening without my thoughts drifting elsewhere. I found out that playing a Tetris clone that never increases in speed and never ends is a good way to keep a clear focus on listening. After changing phones recently my perfect Tetris clone stopped working as it was 32bit and the support was dropped. I've been looking for an alternative and finally found one in a 2048 clone with an Undo button. I thank you for that. It has saved me a lot of trouble staying focused!
There are a lot of comments mentioning Threes! and holding it up as superior. I play a lot of games, and I greatly prefer Threes myself -- but I also remember very well when 2048 came out; I was in college, and 75% or more of my dorm had no interest in Threes and preferred playing and remixing 2048. Threes is very stressful and intense, while 2048 goes straight for your brain's pleasure centers, like many other mobile games nowadays.
There's value in that. There's massive value in 2048 that Threes! does not capture. Just because someone spends a lot of time designing something, it does not entitle them to attention or praise. Many great artists get famous for works they absolutely hate. Gabriele has been consistently courteous about all of this for 10 years, and I'd suggest people here could be a bit more courteous to him too.
To me, Threes poorly straddles the middle ground between a "real game" and a "time filler". If I want a "real game" I'll play Factorio or something. When I need a break from mental work I can pull 2048. I rarely want anything in between.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out the origins of ideas and concepts, especially on a site like Hacker News. 2048 was much more popular than Threes, often to the point where many people are unaware of Threes at all, so I think it’s important in these kinds of forums to make sure people know where the game idea came from, and that the originators get credit.
All: please don't repeat the usual Wolfram trope. (If you don't know what I mean by that, a decade's worth of explanation can be found via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....)
The issue is not that it's wrong, it's that it's extremely repetitive and we want fresh discussion on HN, preferably about the specific content of an article.
I saw that comment but didn't follow the algolia link.
I didn't realize Stephen Wolfram was dang's personal We Do Not Mention the Orangutan. I suppose that given the inevitable prevalence of clichéd back-and-forth tropes and exchanges on HN, there's little choice but to draw a line in the sand on specific versions and hope it serves as a stand-in for all of them.
Totally agree. I prefer Threes! myself but ultimately, the market determines what's fun. Grabriele has been so humble about his success and while I feel for the Threes! developers, they came across as exceptionally sore.
there's also value in creating the "thinking man's" progenitor to 2048. both are extremely valuable. and if we're doing a weighing of the souls, 2048 probably wins. but you can't blame people on this site for gravitating toward the underlying ideas rather than their instantiation-- they're (ostensibly) makers, or at least moreso than the general population.
This is interesting feedback. I always thought that ads being unobtrusive and not part of gameplay would be the saner choice. In my mind, when games ask you to trade watching an add for some kind of in-game benefit or currency, that feels like an unreasonable demand. The ads impinge on the gameplay. The way I've set up the site, ads are tucked in their own corner and should never affect gameplay (though there have been instances of ads spilling over the powerup bar, I'm working on that). Thanks for sharing!
>And the way to make the user a part of the process is to offer a trade for the ad
I think that is a worse pattern overall. It's essentially converting from the idea of watching ads to support the developer to watching ads as a pay to win mechanism. Pay to win mechanisms are always worse than any other alternative.
I'm disappointed in HN for stomping this person for the game that they made. They had no idea Threes existed, made this game as an experiment, and it went viral. Despite this, they still acknowledge Threes on their site.
But they post here and are dogpiled on by people saying they ripped off another game and should feel like a scumbag. That's wrong, let's be kind to each other instead of exhibiting rude behavior that discourages people from pursuing their projects because "it's a ripoff of xyz". This started as an experiment, and is now this person's full time career. Can we instead encourage others to follow?
We're not talking about a 1:1 ripoff, we're talking about a game whose gameplay is adjacent to another game. Is Call of Duty a rip-off of Medal of Honor because they're both WWII FPS games?
HN isn't a person—it's a statistical cloud. There is always a spectrum of opinion. Most of the comments here agree with you.
There are some bilious and excessive responses but that's inevitable when a thread is large. We do our best to moderate the site so that they don't dominate.
People commonly overgeneralize-then-anthropomorphize the data points that rub them the wrong way. There are cognitive biases that we all have which make this an easy trap to fall into ([1], [2], [3]), but it's important that we all try to avoid it.
If you (I don't mean you personally, of course, but all of us) allow the negative tail of the spectrum to form your picture of the community, that's bad—because your picture of the community influences how you participate in it and this will cause harmful secondary effects that can, in the worst case, turn into doom loops.
I don't think the primary harmful effects (e.g. bilious comments and upvotes for indignation) of running a large internet forum like HN are avoidable, but I do think the secondary ones are. At least I hope so!
>Especially when other merge games (Triple Town) existed for years.
That matt guy that's posted like 100 times in this thread doesn't want to hear it, but I've literally only ever heard Threes brought up in comparison to 2048 and Triple Town. No one brings up Threes on their own organically.
"They had no idea Threes existed"
This makes it even worse, because it means they ripped off 1024 instead (the game that ripped off Threes). That means they put even less effort into their clone, even the name is a rip off of that game.
I genuinely don't get how people here can say "Oh it's just like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor" or say that Triple Town and Threes were similar. Obviously there's a spectrum from inspiration to cloning, but 2048 is so far on the cloning end of that spectrum that the whole comparison seems like a joke.
Store and/or access information on a device ( 723 partners included )
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Legitimate Interest Consent + Use limited data to select content ( 101 partners included )
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If this doesn't describe the modern internet I don't know what else does.
This may be buried in the comments and you will never see it, but thank you very much Gabriele. Your game helped me in a very weird circumstance.
I was afraid of flying, specially on the takeoff and landing (and turbulence as well, ha). So I read somewhere that if I focused on something else, it would help me. So for the past years, I played 2048 during takeoff and landing, and it worked. It helped me to focus on something else, not the airplane, and I started to enjoying more my trips.
Now I don't need to do it anymore, but just for the experience I still do it when I fly. So thank you for helping me with my fear!
Always amazing to read about surprising positive impacts that a project can make in someone's life like this.
This doesn't make any sense. We should be celebrating 8 years, 16 years and so on.
TypeScript was fairly new at that time and to learn it, I ported 2048 to TypeScript. It was fun!
Fast forward a couple of years, I was debugging an issue with a react component and glanced over the .d.ts of react. I was quite surprised when I saw that my name was in them. I never contributed to react's types myself.
It turned out that someone took some types I wrote for 2048 and used them in the very first type definitions for react: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/commit/4b...
It's still there to this date, but I've lost my TS port in the sands of time.
Just to note to say thanks. Never have I played anything that gives me so much satisfaction. I found I had some weird aptitude for it.
Congrats on the 10 year anniversary, though honestly I think having tried your new 2048 I'll go back to the classic build. It might just be the hours I've poured into the original but it feels faster without the additional animation. But still a lot of good work there and I'm wishing you the best of luck.
As for the argument about Threes!, I have to say that I've generally found 2048 to be a much more fun game; the full-screen sliding and the lack of the 1+2 mechanic makes things move much faster, which for me is a priority. That's definitely personal taste, but I hate the vitriol that comes up on the topic.
My favorite 2048 clone by far is https://ashervollmer.github.io/2048/128.html, which is just a 3x3 2048 that only spawns 2. I like it because it is possible to achieve total victory, a perfect game fills the board with a a final score of 7172.
Wow, has it already been ten years? I also wrote a clone of 2048 back then (https://github.com/nieware/gofusion), using Go and a QML-based UI, for a contest, and (to my astonishment) actually won the first prize, which consisted of a Nexus 7 tablet (which served me well for several years) and a rare original vinyl Gopher figurine (which is still sitting on my desk looking at me serenely with its googly eyes while I type this).
Cannot believe this is a decade old - will always remember playing 2048 on the NYC subway to school with my friends <3
You know how the distribution of 2-value vs 4-value for new tiles is a weighted random function? And sometimes you get an unlikely 4 that really screw you over? Have you thought about adding a mode which always creates the worst option of the 2?
You could call it “God does play dice with the universe. They're loaded and he hates you.”
Like a Cambodian version of minesweeper.
I think 2048-AI had this, but I’m not sure. It’d surely be pretty evil. Imagine it turning on randomly when it detects you’re going too fast :)
Like HATETRIS: https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html
I've opened the game without reading the post. When I've hovered over the crown and saw the prime stuff I thought it was some kinda' joke or parody. Turns out it isn't. Which I think is even funnier in some meta/state-of-the-things-today way. As there's nothing left but laugh at the absurdity of our reality.
I played 2048 A LOT back when it came out. I still fire it up every now and then.
Thanks Gabriele, what a fantastic game you have made.
It is easy to underestimate any individual's contribution to society, especially if it can be (ridiculously) trivialized as "just a mindless game" (that hurt to type).
2048 has impacted our species. Seriously.
I can assure you from an objective, subjective, authoritative, personal, and collective position: your game has saved many people their sanity, entertained millions, saved/wasted billions, inspired untold people into math, web dev, and game design.
But most importantly, people didn't quit "mindless/thankless/frustrating/demeaning" jobs because their mind was _just_ adequately stimulated by your creation to continue to justify coming to work the next day.
Not demanding enough to command full attention (until we get a 4096, then nothing else matters), but 'choring' enough (in the most charitable sense) to keep people from finding a more or less demanding time-fill, likely compromising their jobs.
Jobs that help others, in an exponential way, sometimes.
Even if this was an isolated incident, I can tell you, you will forever be top 5 (hyper) viral games by a solo developer.
If a butterfly can cause a hurricane, 2048 could just as easily be the reason we survive the next filter, for all we know.
You helped me help others help others. And you deserve to know that.
BTW: I always blocked your ads (no offense, just cognitive stuff).
Drop a donation link somewhere, please.
Congratulations!
"Powerups with Amazon Prime" sounds like the famous bug report that grep (I think) should search on Amazon if it doesn't find the string locally, which was submitted IIRC in protest at the Ubuntu "lens" doing just that.
For those who haven't heard of Threes, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the original game that 1024, 2048 etc were cloned from (and I think it's still the best by far). Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threes#Legacy
Thank you for your comment. I wanted to add that credit should indeed be given where it's due and that while I didn’t mention Threes in my original post, it has played a significant role in 2048’s existence. Threes is credited on the play2048.co site (and now also on GitHub), and I’ve always tried to acknowledge its influence.
That said, I think there’s a balance to strike. As I mentioned before, I created 2048 before I became aware of Threes, and while it’s important to credit inspiration, I’m not convinced that every creative project needs to trace back every indirect influence. 2048 began as a small experiment without any intent of gaining popularity, and it grew into something distinct, shaped by the viral spread and its community of its open-source variations.
I understand the value of recognizing origins, but I also believe 2048 has developed its own identity over time. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m always open to improving where needed. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I feel like this is a bit misleading. You say you weren’t aware of Threes at all when you made 2048, which may be technically true, but then you should probably clarify that 2048 was a clone of 1024 which was a clone of Threes. And this all happened within around a month of when Threes released… to the point where many people started accusing Threes of being a clone of 2048.
Let it go, Matt.
As Threes was getting famous I bought it and tried a bit, but it didn't really stick.
It's with 2048 that I actually got hooked, it felt like a more natural and seamless game to play. I think it's the simplicity (no cuteness, no craftyness) that helps abstract the game, and of course dealing with powers of two makes it all the more natural. It felt a lot easier to get in and out of the game, be it for 30 sec to check the train station or 4 hours until lunch break.
I feel like Threes was the cute and whimsical game, while 2048 could probably become the classic game, in the same kind of spot as Tetris.
While it's unfortunate that the Threes team didn't receive a proper recognition, I believe the popularity of 2048 mainly comes from the fact that it can be, in some sense, "finished" unlike Threes. Yes, you can continue after 2048, but it was a good milestone that is initially hard but can be done relatively easily once you've got the hang of it. The clear milestone makes every game play much more disposable unlike Threes, even though you can surely continue even after that. (I did play Threes a bit before 2048 got popular and realized this in retrospect.) The same principle applies to more recent Suika Game and I still find it amusing that the only major change for both was the title.
Hmm, I'd guess that difference isn't significant for the vast majority of players. And for those that care, the greater depth of Threes is surely an advantage.
I think 2048 became more popular because it was a) on the web, and b) free, whereas Threes was only on the iPhone and cost a few bucks.
Oh, and c) the OP, to give him his due credit, did a really nice job with it! It had the same kind of simplicity and virality as Wordle.
I will add, from playing with this just now, three's feels so much harder.
Suika Game has the same core mechanic (and many clones) but still represents a fundamentally different game. The gameplay is not even in the same category, as it involves some kind of physical simulation.
... or did you mean that Suika Game itself wasn't the original game with the falling-circles mechanic?
Here's a great blog post from the Threes dev about their creation process and the impact of the rip-offs:
https://asherv.com/threes/threemails/
>2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (that you'll see hidden in the emails below). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. We’d wager most people that have been able to score a 768 or even a 384 in Threes would be able to do the same using the fabled “corner strategy”. You probably could too! Just try tapping “up” then “right” in alternating order until you can’t move. Then press left. You may not get to a 2048, but you might just see your highest score ever.
>When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken.
From my experience, this greatly overstates the "exploit". In 2048 you get to maybe 128 this way typically before you can't move up/right any more, then you have to start thinking after the left press. Basically whenever you slide away from the "preferred" corner, supposing your plan is to slide back promptly, there's always a chance that a random spawn gets in your way and complicates the plan. Getting to 2048 on the first try doesn't sound like a modal experience at all. (Of course, most new 2048 players won't have had the experience of developing Threes first.)
For that matter, the developer talks about how rare it is to see a 6144, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that reaching a 4096 in 2048 is far more difficult than reaching 2048.
At any rate, it's not at all immediately clear why having the player join 1+2 first before making blocks of 3*2^n, should noticeably improve the gameplay over having only powers of two. So IMO it's not that the gameplay of 2048 is fundamentally less interesting; the implementation just sets a lower standard.
(Though for what it's worth, I've wondered how it might go with the Fibonacci sequence - allowing 1s to merge either with 2s or other 1s.)
That's been implemented - google "Fibonacci 2048".
You just have to play Threes for a few hours and it becomes obvious it’s a much more interesting and deep game than 2048. Of all the things that can be debated about this situation, that feels like the biggest stretch of all.
I don't mean to "debate" the depth of Threes (having not played it), only to say that it isn't obvious from a description. On the other side of the equation, 2048 is clearly interesting enough to have sold (and, from what I can tell, marketed by word of mouth), and its players would seem to disagree with the Threes author that 2048 is "a broken game". The corner shake might seem like a tedious but powerful strategy; but it doesn't come anywhere close to trivializing the object of the game, and this is a casual time-waster anyway.
2048 might well have won out for its simplicity (although personally I think the audio had a lot to do with it). Screenshots of Threes development (from the page linked in the post I quoted) imply that for quite a while it allowed for making numbers of any 2^x*3^y form, and earlier versions of the game must have tried even more complex rules - even larger prime numbers like 79 show up. Eventually this reduced to only numbers of the form 2^x*3 (as well as 1 and 2). To me that looks like a strange left-over irregularity, even if it does improve gameplay.
(After reading the rest of the thread, I think I regret replying at all.)
> interesting enough to have sold
Hasn't 2048 always been free? When comparing a paid game with a clone that's free (or even "free-to-play with obnoxious ads and lootbox mechanics" not that 2048 is that) the latter will usually become more popular, and that certainly happened here.
I am not sure how I feel about it. I certainly don't believe anyone should be able to legally own an idea like "sliding tile number games based on powers of 2 with or without being multiplied by 3" but I also don't have a lot of respect for those who, lacking an original idea, resort to cloning someone else's creative work (or in 2048's case, I guess, cloning another clone). So I guess I have no problem with them existing, but don't feel any desire to give them accolades or to play their game.
you're right, it's not an "exploit"; it is literally the gameplay. go watch anyone play 2048 for more than 9 seconds and then try to tell me that isn't the case...
and why is the fact that the difference between threes and 2048 "not immediately obvious" salient... at all? what is it even supposed to mean? i'm not so great at number theory... that doesn't make me think that all those people are gods among humans. same with the obverse: i am really good at geometry, so honestly are we sure that the ancient greeks were even good at math? it's not immediately obvious to me that geometry even is math. they didn't even have calculators for god's sake!
I love being able to see the prototype evolution of the game on here. Thanks for sharing!
Threes was (I believe) the first iOS game I actually paid money for. You could tell that the author was a true craftsperson who really cared about every detail of the product. It always felt unjust that the clones got all the attention, and now the nostalgia.
Threes would have worked fine as a free web game if they prioritized attention, but they chose to make it an iOS only paid app, presumably because they preferred making money over gaining attention. That's a very reasonable tradeoff in my book, I'd rather have money in pocket than stranger's upvotes.
I still play Threes regularly. It’s super accessible but still remains challenging after years of play. I even occasionally still set a new high score.
Came here to post a link to Threes, it does make me a bit sad whenever people mention 2048 without Threes.
> it does make me a bit sad
Does it though?
uhhhh. well if reading their personal attestation is insufficient...
I don't understand the peeve people have about mentioning Threes all the time. Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever? The vitriol in some of the comments here are quite weird to me.
It's also dishonest to label 2048 as a clone. Personally I never cared much for Threes, and same I guess with my parents etc which all got hooked for a while on 2048. 2048 strikes a good balance on being accessible and challenging, most people don't want it more complicated or deeper.
If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously. Instead, many people act as if 2048 was a slight on Threes somehow, stealing their thunder. I actually bought Threes based on all the comments back then, but didn't really like it. Too cutesy, and too challenging when I just wanted to mindlessly swipe.
> Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
Well the great differentiator between puzzle games is the idea of the playing mechanism. The great differentiator between FPS is implementation. If I make an FPS, I didn’t really steal from Doom because the idea is pretty obvious. But if I make a sliding game that’s very similar to 2048, you might say I stole the idea. It’s like with patents, subjectively the mechanism of a FPS shouldn’t be patentable to me, but three or 2048 might be.
Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
It's a fair question, but Doom and Quake were both very famous and successful.
What sticks in my craw a bit with Threes is that the clones came out really fast, and 2048 in particular because much more famous and successful, so Threes never really got the chance to shine as much as it deserved (except when die-hard fans like me keep coming out of the woodwork to hype it, as you say). And I still think Threes has a much better and deeper game design than any of the clones!
If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
It's not that I resent the success of 2048 -- to the contrary, the OP did a great job with it and the success is deserved. But I assume that many people who have heard of 2048 have not heard of Threes, and I'd like them to try it, because it's great.
>If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
Why? It's not a job, or even a fun hobby, to try and ensure forgotten things get the recognition they deserve.
I'm surprised it's hard to understand! I see it as like recommending a cult movie or book to people -- that's not an unusual thing to do, right? Like when you're talking about time travel movies and there's always that one person who pops up and says "OK, but have you seen Primer? You should see Primer!"
It can get tedious if you overdo it, sure.
>Like when you're talking about time travel movies
Sure, but this wasn't a thread about games, or sliding number games, in general, it was a thread about 2048 specifically.
>It's not a job, or even a fun hobby
However, some might imagine it to be virtuous.
>If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously.
This. I've never heard anyone mention Threes outside of a sub discussion about 2048. For all the people here that claim to love it, it has had very little impact outside of being discussed as being similar to, or a precursor of, 2048.
Congratulations on creating such a wonderful game. My wife still plays it, I would claim, daily. I would claim it's part of her evening relaxation :) I will most certainly forward your new developments to her and also try it myself. Good luck with your new job.
Interesting to see the times for speedruns of this game: https://www.speedrun.com/2048
Bravo Gabriele, 2048 was an amazing piece of design and UI. Loved it. You did amazing work.
383,392 points on the first try, using the new powerups. At that point I had a 16384, 8192, 4096, 2048, 1024, 256 and two 128's, but getting that extra 512 and then successfully folding the tiles into a 32768 likely wouldn't have been feasible, even if I had had more luck. I think this was enough for me for a while =D
Here are the threads I could find with 20 or more comments. Smaller threads are listed in a collapsed reply. These are in chronological order for a change:
2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566 - March 2014 (410 comments)
2048 AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379821 - March 2014 (189 comments)
2048 – multiplayer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384974 - March 2014 (113 comments)
2048 x 2 = 4096 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7396134 - March 2014 (24 comments)
2048 in the terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7398011 - March 2014 (88 comments)
2048 with Leaderboard and achievements, with Kivy (Python/OpenGL) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404515 - March 2014 (25 comments)
Show HN: 2048 in 2048 bytes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406605 - March 2014 (54 comments)
2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416777 - March 2014 (66 comments)
2048 in 4D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418219 - March 2014 (113 comments)
Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7431047 - March 2014 (121 comments)
Show HN: Logarithmic Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432448 - March 2014 (64 comments)
HN Plays 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7433524 - March 2014 (81 comments)
Show HN: 2048 Tetris - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435569 - March 2014 (60 comments)
2048 for physicists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7438567 - March 2014 (33 comments)
2048 Numberwang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439444 - March 2014 (110 comments)
Show HN: 2048 without numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443166 - March 2014 (46 comments)
Dropbox 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443379 - March 2014 (2 comments)
8402: 2048 from the other side - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446139 - March 2014 (53 comments)
2(048) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453543 - March 2014 (46 comments)
2048 in sed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7464294 - March 2014 (35 comments)
2048 game to the Atari 2600 VCS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7466097 - March 2014 (22 comments)
2048 Solver - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473486 - March 2014 (38 comments)
Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106 - March 2014 (208 comments)
2048 As A Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510670 - April 2014 (52 comments)
2048 implemented in 487 bytes of C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535666 - April 2014 (45 comments)
2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543483 - April 2014 (51 comments)
Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637009 - April 2014 (32 comments)
2048 in Famo.us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7660206 - April 2014 (21 comments)
2048, success and me - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704800 - May 2014 (222 comments)
Show HN: 2048 in Swift - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7845441 - June 2014 (34 comments)
Implementing 2048 in 90 lines of Haskell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896187 - June 2014 (24 comments)
243 Game – inspired by 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991773 - July 2014 (36 comments)
Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030413 - July 2014 (80 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15327837 - Sept 2017 (46 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States by Exhaustive Enumeration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15894126 - Dec 2017 (22 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790338 - April 2018 (43 comments)
Show HN: 2048.cpp – Play 2048 in directly your terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897283 - Sept 2018 (45 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28310842 - Aug 2021 (50 comments)
Show HN: 1024, a 2048 Puzzle Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32405510 - Aug 2022 (48 comments)
Show HN: Exponentile – A match 3 game mixed with 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39897112 - April 2024 (40 comments)
Show HN: King Thirteen: 2048 with chess pieces, in under 13 KB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623814 - Sept 2024 (80 comments)
Here are the threads I could find with fewer than 20 comments—again in chronological order:
Ask HN: Why is the 2048 post so popular? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7378022 - March 2014 (15 comments)
2048 was too easy : welcome 4096 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7386557 - March 2014 (9 comments)
Simple trick to beat 2048: left up, left down, repeat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7388699 - March 2014 (3 comments)
2048 with undo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7389112 - March 2014 (5 comments)
2048 in Augmented Reality - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7391322 - March 2014 (2 comments)
JS1k demo details: 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7407055 - March 2014 (14 comments)
Show HN: 2048 with shareable replays - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408918 - March 2014 (4 comments)
2048 Benchmark - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408952 - March 2014 (4 comments)
How to win 2048 everytime - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7410582 - March 2014 (6 comments)
Invisible 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418310 - March 2014 (4 comments)
Why Do I Find 2048 So Damn Addictive? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418806 - March 2014 (2 comments)
Words oh so great: 2048 meets Scrabble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419264 - March 2014 (5 comments)
Xkcd comic about 2048 game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427895 - March 2014 (3 comments)
Flappy 2048 in HTML5 Canvas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7428175 - March 2014 (17 comments)
Flappy 2048 AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432754 - March 2014 (2 comments)
HN Plays 2048 (democracy) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7434051 - March 2014 (14 comments)
Show HN: Gameboy port of 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7434529 - March 2014 (2 comments)
2048 in bash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435174 - March 2014 (18 comments)
Flappy + 2048 side-by-side - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436813 - March 2014 (4 comments)
All 2048 games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7438716 - March 2014 (4 comments)
2048 Directory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439663 - March 2014 (4 comments)
WebRTC 2-player 2048 on same board with matchmaking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445906 - March 2014 (8 comments)
2048.py - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446524 - March 2014 (2 comments)
2048 with Stats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446608 - March 2014 (4 comments)
2048 game – How it started? Interview with the author - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7448745 - March 2014 (3 comments)
1125899906842624 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7448931 - March 2014 (3 comments)
Popular versions of 2048 with previews - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449160 - March 2014 (2 comments)
What is the optimal algorithm for the game 2048? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7450244 - March 2014 (13 comments)
2048 showcase - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7459448 - March 2014 (2 comments)
Myo armband controlling 2048 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463808 - March 2014 (4 comments)
Ask HN: Why doesn't 2048 have a '1' tile? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7464533 - March 2014 (2 comments)
Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473770 - March 2014 (4 comments)
2048 Golf - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7474824 - March 2014 (2 comments)
Code a 2048 bot on hackerrank - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7481542 - March 2014 (8 comments)
Show HN: I found a way to 'cheat'/solve 2048 (With live demo) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7486762 - March 2014 (10 comments)
Free Open Source Software and the 2048 Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490316 - March 2014 (9 comments)
Udacity Course: Make Your Own 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536123 - April 2014 (2 comments)
Building 2048 in AngularJS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7554348 - April 2014 (14 comments)
2048 for stars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7603732 - April 2014 (2 comments)
A 2048 spinoff to raise funds for cancer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7606252 - April 2014 (3 comments)
A physics version of 2048 – stellar nucleosynthesis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7618293 - April 2014 (2 comments)
2048 on 8-bit Sega Systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620914 - April 2014 (4 comments)
Show HN: 2048 Game of Thrones Edition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656436 - April 2014 (2 comments)
2048 in Idris - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668540 - April 2014 (11 comments)
2048 in Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7705947 - May 2014 (15 comments)
2048 in bash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7708183 - May 2014 (6 comments)
(Yet another) parody of 2048, where you try to lose as fast as possible - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713249 - May 2014 (5 comments)
2048, Wolfram Style - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7721685 - May 2014 (6 comments)
2048 gestures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780359 - May 2014 (2 comments)
2048 in Erlang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869179 - June 2014 (14 comments)
Cubic 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022498 - July 2014 (4 comments)
Show HN: Gunoki – Trainyard-and-2048-inspired Puzzle Game for iOS and Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329527 - Sept 2014 (4 comments)
Twilio Plays 2048 – Multiplayer Without Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498398 - Oct 2014 (3 comments)
Can AI beat 2048? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8724754 - Dec 2014 (12 comments)
Play 2048, get paid in Bitcoins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9195167 - March 2015 (3 comments)
Zer0: addictive Web number-game like 2048 between two news from HN ^^ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11202264 - March 2016 (5 comments)
Show HN: WebRTC Serverless 2-player 2048 Game with Annotated Source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12788147 - Oct 2016 (13 comments)
Show HN: Hex 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890753 - Dec 2017 (3 comments)
Ask HN: What are other awesome games like 2048? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16471374 - Feb 2018 (3 comments)
Show HN: Adversarial 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31922891 - June 2022 (2 comments)
x86-64 Operating System to Play 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516496 - June 2023 (3 comments)
Hi gab, thanks for sharing. This was fun to play back during our Facepunch era, and it’s still entertaining now.
Hello as well from a past Facepunch user, 10 years go by very quickly
@Terabytes glad to see your work, the new release is really nice
Likewise, glad to see fellow former Facepunchers here :-) Great work!
> suddenly it seemed like everyone was playing it
That's exactly how I remember it, yes.
It started with only the tech people, but then it spread to all coworkers, friends, grandparents...
Anyway, congrats on this game but I won't fall in the same trap as 10 years prior, wasting hours upon hours of productivity!
Random thing I noticed last week: there's a version of 2048 buried in the United Airlines iPhone app. Hamburger -> Games -> 2048.
Also in some inflight entertainment systems!
This feels so much snappier than the original. I don't know if I'd use the powerups, because usually I play 2048 mindlessly and when I don't really want to think too much, but I might find myself pleasantly surprised in the future.
I have to ask, did the game make you rich?
Your game has inspired me back then to create a game on quickly finding isomorphic graphs. Since then, I haven't created any other game in 10 years. So thank you for a powerful stimulus!
https://vpavlenko.github.io/fluffy-graph/
Always interesting to hear the other side of the story: https://asherv.com/threes/threemails/
HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106
2048 is only 10 years old, I am shocked.
I found it a while ago when looking for the source of xjumpjump and instantly liked it. Thanks for creating 2048.
Every so often I try and see if xjumpjump is available on cell phones, but none yet.
I made a version with llamas at some point, as a valentine's card. (Source code is yours, I just swapped the images!)
# of llamas = log2(original number)
https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/twothousandandfortyppaca...
Sometimes I have trouble listening without my thoughts drifting elsewhere. I found out that playing a Tetris clone that never increases in speed and never ends is a good way to keep a clear focus on listening. After changing phones recently my perfect Tetris clone stopped working as it was 32bit and the support was dropped. I've been looking for an alternative and finally found one in a 2048 clone with an Undo button. I thank you for that. It has saved me a lot of trouble staying focused!
I remember seeing it back then, and playing it for quite awhile. Great game, thank you!
How did you do animations for the menus and stuff?
There are a lot of comments mentioning Threes! and holding it up as superior. I play a lot of games, and I greatly prefer Threes myself -- but I also remember very well when 2048 came out; I was in college, and 75% or more of my dorm had no interest in Threes and preferred playing and remixing 2048. Threes is very stressful and intense, while 2048 goes straight for your brain's pleasure centers, like many other mobile games nowadays.
There's value in that. There's massive value in 2048 that Threes! does not capture. Just because someone spends a lot of time designing something, it does not entitle them to attention or praise. Many great artists get famous for works they absolutely hate. Gabriele has been consistently courteous about all of this for 10 years, and I'd suggest people here could be a bit more courteous to him too.
To me, Threes poorly straddles the middle ground between a "real game" and a "time filler". If I want a "real game" I'll play Factorio or something. When I need a break from mental work I can pull 2048. I rarely want anything in between.
Lots of people do want that “middle ground” game, especially people who exclusively play games on mobile rather than PC or console.
[flagged]
There is nothing wrong with pointing out the origins of ideas and concepts, especially on a site like Hacker News. 2048 was much more popular than Threes, often to the point where many people are unaware of Threes at all, so I think it’s important in these kinds of forums to make sure people know where the game idea came from, and that the originators get credit.
This manifestation of the threes trope below everything 2048 related reminds me of a comment I recently read below a Stephen Wolfram related post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41406645
All: please don't repeat the usual Wolfram trope. (If you don't know what I mean by that, a decade's worth of explanation can be found via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....) The issue is not that it's wrong, it's that it's extremely repetitive and we want fresh discussion on HN, preferably about the specific content of an article.
I saw that comment but didn't follow the algolia link.
I didn't realize Stephen Wolfram was dang's personal We Do Not Mention the Orangutan. I suppose that given the inevitable prevalence of clichéd back-and-forth tropes and exchanges on HN, there's little choice but to draw a line in the sand on specific versions and hope it serves as a stand-in for all of them.
I don't know who the orangutan is, but that's just one of a thwack of tropes that make me wince on HN. A multithwack. A plenithwack.
They can't be stopped but one can maybe dampen them a bit sometimes. Or not.
Wasn't that just because Threes was a paid iPhone-only app and 2048 was a free near-clone?
no, brah, 2048 had better game mechanics, brah
Totally agree. I prefer Threes! myself but ultimately, the market determines what's fun. Grabriele has been so humble about his success and while I feel for the Threes! developers, they came across as exceptionally sore.
there's also value in creating the "thinking man's" progenitor to 2048. both are extremely valuable. and if we're doing a weighing of the souls, 2048 probably wins. but you can't blame people on this site for gravitating toward the underlying ideas rather than their instantiation-- they're (ostensibly) makers, or at least moreso than the general population.
uBlock Origin blocks 330 items on that page, which I think is a personal record for the sites I have been to.
Consent banner says data sent to "901 partners"...
I like the game though, but I use the PWA made by Opera team at https://2048-opera-pwa.surge.sh/
I play it evertime when I watch a tv show. I played it probably 10 thousands time.
Still very fun!
I didn't notice anything different from how it was in my memory. That seems like a successful modernization :)
I didn't notice that there were power ups until reading your post.
Just downloaded the new classic version with ads and wanted to pass along a suggestion that Thor makes.
While I understand that you’ve gotta make a living, ads are far more palatable if the user can consent to them.
And the way to make the user a part of the process is to offer a trade for the ad, rather than obtrusively running them.
“Would you like 500 gold to watch an ad?”
Yes? Ad for in-game currency that provides powerups? That’s a great deal and it’s win/win.
No? Okay, no ad, but no power up.
Statistically, you almost always get a yes, but the players are 100x happier than the slimey games that force ads in unscrupulous ways.
This is interesting feedback. I always thought that ads being unobtrusive and not part of gameplay would be the saner choice. In my mind, when games ask you to trade watching an add for some kind of in-game benefit or currency, that feels like an unreasonable demand. The ads impinge on the gameplay. The way I've set up the site, ads are tucked in their own corner and should never affect gameplay (though there have been instances of ads spilling over the powerup bar, I'm working on that). Thanks for sharing!
>And the way to make the user a part of the process is to offer a trade for the ad
I think that is a worse pattern overall. It's essentially converting from the idea of watching ads to support the developer to watching ads as a pay to win mechanism. Pay to win mechanisms are always worse than any other alternative.
Thank you for the entertainment 2048 gave me years ago, hope your new version has the reach you want!
2048 is fantastic, and going full time on your project is a huge milestone. Congrats!
Was a fun game, I still remember trying it back then!
It seems like there's a little pay to win even in a simple game like 2048 nowadays :)
My favorite version is the wasm implementation written in rust.
Source: https://github.com/dev-family/wasm-2048
Playable here: https://2048.dev.family/
20k run on the first try, enough for next 10 years https://cdn.jpg.wtf/futurico/8d/36/1729783571-8d36e171f9deb9...
I'm disappointed in HN for stomping this person for the game that they made. They had no idea Threes existed, made this game as an experiment, and it went viral. Despite this, they still acknowledge Threes on their site.
But they post here and are dogpiled on by people saying they ripped off another game and should feel like a scumbag. That's wrong, let's be kind to each other instead of exhibiting rude behavior that discourages people from pursuing their projects because "it's a ripoff of xyz". This started as an experiment, and is now this person's full time career. Can we instead encourage others to follow?
We're not talking about a 1:1 ripoff, we're talking about a game whose gameplay is adjacent to another game. Is Call of Duty a rip-off of Medal of Honor because they're both WWII FPS games?
HN isn't a person—it's a statistical cloud. There is always a spectrum of opinion. Most of the comments here agree with you.
There are some bilious and excessive responses but that's inevitable when a thread is large. We do our best to moderate the site so that they don't dominate.
People commonly overgeneralize-then-anthropomorphize the data points that rub them the wrong way. There are cognitive biases that we all have which make this an easy trap to fall into ([1], [2], [3]), but it's important that we all try to avoid it.
If you (I don't mean you personally, of course, but all of us) allow the negative tail of the spectrum to form your picture of the community, that's bad—because your picture of the community influences how you participate in it and this will cause harmful secondary effects that can, in the worst case, turn into doom loops.
I don't think the primary harmful effects (e.g. bilious comments and upvotes for indignation) of running a large internet forum like HN are avoidable, but I do think the secondary ones are. At least I hope so!
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Especially when other merge games (Triple Town) existed for years.
They're all in the same general genre.
>Especially when other merge games (Triple Town) existed for years.
That matt guy that's posted like 100 times in this thread doesn't want to hear it, but I've literally only ever heard Threes brought up in comparison to 2048 and Triple Town. No one brings up Threes on their own organically.
where is the stomping happening? i think everyone here knows the score, and both teams have points.
"They had no idea Threes existed" This makes it even worse, because it means they ripped off 1024 instead (the game that ripped off Threes). That means they put even less effort into their clone, even the name is a rip off of that game.
I genuinely don't get how people here can say "Oh it's just like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor" or say that Triple Town and Threes were similar. Obviously there's a spectrum from inspiration to cloning, but 2048 is so far on the cloning end of that spectrum that the whole comparison seems like a joke.
I think 2048 is a better game and I like it more.