Even after all these years, that experience still feels a bit surreal to me. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who connected with the game, whether in small or significant ways, and for the stories shared along the way. Some people expressed how they were going through tough times and found some comfort, however small, in playing 2048.
At the start of last year, I wanted to breathe new life into the game as it was starting to show its age. I quit my job last October to work on 2048 full time and spent a year building this new version (the original took just 5 days!). I wanted to pay tribute to what made 2048 great while modernizing and polishing the experience.
The idea of adding powerups came when Prime Gaming and I connected to see if we could create a special version of 2048 for their members, with some exclusive extras. Some of those powerups made it into the main game, though there’s still a Classic[3] mode just like the original for those who prefer a more hardcore experience. The old site is also still online[4].
2048 is now my full-time focus, and I’m excited about the ways it can keep improving. I wanted to share this update with the community where it all began, both for a bit of nostalgia and to hear your thoughts and feedback!
Thank you all so much!
— Gabriele
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566
[2]: https://medium.com/@gabrielecirulli/2048-success-and-me-7dc6...
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.
Wordle was just...
DropBox was just...
the iPhone was just...
Modern movies are just...
Don't allow others to dismiss your work. They are jealous they didn't do it first - which begs the question - if it was _just_.... then why didn't _they_ do it?
I was originally frustrated with your game and jealous of you for awhile, too.
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.
... or did you mean that Suika Game itself wasn't the original game with the falling-circles mechanic?
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.
This argument has always been silly.
Three's didn't invent sliding tile games. Sliding tile games existed going back to the 1980s and 2048's mechanics are different enough that I don't even think they're comparable.
They've existed in wood for a lot longer than that.
>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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
(PS: and on a more meta level, people like us feeling super clever about "2048 helped Threes!" might be the secret sauce responsible for much of the longevity of the games' shared virality)
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.
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.
Consent + Develop and improve services ( 379 partners included )
Legitimate Interest Consent + Use limited data to select content ( 101 partners included )
Legitimate Interest Consent + Use limited data to select advertising ( 472 partners included )
Legitimate Interest Consent + Create profiles for personalised advertising ( 529 partners included )
Use precise geolocation data ( 547 partners included )
Consent + Actively scan device characteristics for identification ( 551 partners included )
If this doesn't describe the modern internet I don't know what else does.
FWIW, on desktop Firefox, between uBlock Origin, EFF's Privacy Badger, and Ghostery "Never Consent" cookie dismissal, I got no trackers, no cookies, no ads, and full site functionality.
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?
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
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.
They're all in the same general genre.
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.
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!
2048: 24s
4096: 1m 37s
8192: 4m 53s
16384: 13m 34s
32768: 55m 24sYou could call it “God does play dice with the universe. They're loaded and he hates you.”
BTW, congrats on the whole thing; what a ride. I remember staying up all night implementing the AI after seeing it here, and the rush of seeing it win the first time, plus the added rush of seeing the AI post right next to the original post on here. Thanks for the fun!
My one observation is that it didn't feel intellectually engaging until the board was fairly full. Until I got to ~2500 or so, I was just making random-ish moves that felt like they didn't matter much. So it took say 15min before I got to the "good part."
It would be nice if the game could be modified in some way to get to the sweet spot earlier. Maybe starting from a mostly-full "puzzle" board, with varying levels of difficulty.
Or if the early moves actually DO matter more - and my beginner brain just didn't realize it - maybe there's a way to explain that connection to newer players so that they engage their brain earlier on.
Almost feels a bit like chess opening moves, which to a beginner might not feel very impactful, but to an experienced player they can see the connection from that one early pawn move to something meaningful later on in the game.
The new powerups etc. are nice for removing a mistake, or for letting you get a score a little bit higher at the end game, but won't take you the distance unless you have good technique.
A big part of the magic is getting your head round it - like any other logic puzzle.
I'm curious what you mean by "the trick"!
I expect it to just render with my chosen fonts. That's what everything else does.
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)
But also made me think: what other "fads" have we seen?
Some that come to mind is a wave of "{x}, a {y} written in rust", or more recently the wave of things being thin wrappers/prompts on top of some llm/transformer. Was also a time it felt like it daily was a new js library on the front page. It would be cool with a history of hn of sorts, about what's been in vogue at times.
Makes me think we could maybe ease up on that when it comes to ongoing work.
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)
I remembered 2048 as a nice all-javascript game that runs in memory... opened this "updated version" and was met with slow-loading fonts, Google Ads, sign in and payment features, and the game did not in fact work (UI rendered but the initial 2 tile never loaded).
It was fun. Later I discovered 2048, and it was also fun, and felt like a bit of a different game to me.
The author's reaction to 2048 rubbed me the wrong way a bit. https://asherv.com/threes/threemails/
Thankfully fans of 2048 pushed back and most decided that it's a simple enough game that you can't really expect there not to be clones, or clones of clones. I like this one: https://mdjorge.github.io/doge2048/
---
Edit: From the post about Threes:
> We do believe imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but ideally the imitation happens after we’ve had time to descend slowly from the peak -- not the moment we plant the flag.
Fair enough. Things moved too fast for that back then and they move even faster now. A coding AI could help create a ripoff.
But at the same time, this should really be a learning lesson to everyone- if your game or idea is simple enough to clone that someone can "rip it off" with a week of effort, you'd better damn well make sure your original excels in something that can't be cloned quite so quickly. Or not spend so much time working on it. Having only played 2048 and seeing how relatively polished and pleasing the presentation of it was for a so-called week of effort, I find it a bit baffling that it took the Threes team a year of work.
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.
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.
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!
One day later, did you succeed in that?
I like the game though, but I use the PWA made by Opera team at https://2048-opera-pwa.surge.sh/
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.
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.
"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.
On a sidenote: it's been years, but anyone else slightly annoyed that the "Out of Moves" text is still not centered?
HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106
I'd actually built an AI for Threes some time earlier (https://github.com/nneonneo/threes-ai), although (perhaps unsurprisingly) the 2048 AI turned out to be a lot more popular.
The timing is pretty funny too - I was on a flight just two weeks ago that featured 2048 as one of the in-flight games, so I played it myself for a bit, got to 2048, then got my AI to get me to 4096 - and promptly crashed the whole app! Your implementation, even though it took just five days, was remarkably robust and fast and has held up really well all these years - real props to the great job you did.
I guess now I'll have to update my AI for all the powerups you've added to the game :^)
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.
# of llamas = log2(original number)
https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/twothousandandfortyppaca...
Thanks Gabriele, what a fantastic game you have made.
Was at 4096, and I tend to bunch up all of my numbers in sequential order like a snake, with the metaphorical head being the bottom left. Well, I was no longer able to avoid swiping down or left, so I had to swipe up. I had the full complement of two undos left, and 8 spare squares for numbers to appear.
Three times in a row, a number appeared in the bottom left when I swiped up. Odds of which should be 1/512 unless the game biases in favor of certain squares for hidden difficulty.
I pretty much decided not to play after that, because it was the third time that's happened. Not yet knowing what the actual code is that decides where new numbers appear, it frustrated me enough to not want to revisit this version of the game.
Source: https://github.com/dev-family/wasm-2048
Playable here: https://2048.dev.family/
I remember a coworker who said something along the lines of "I am free!" when he finally got 2048, and then never touched the game again. I hope the new power ups will make the game less addictive.
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.
My phone said this sounded more professional but I kind of hate it.
Turns out the fork is still up. It's been literally 10 years.
My brain is just too hardwired to use cursor keys and doesn’t even think to look outside the box and click the buttons with a mouse, I guess.
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.
How? How does that game pay anywhere nearly enough to allow that?
Why do you need to share tracking data with many hundreds of shady organisations.
