2048 Games

There are a variety of games with "2048" in their name, or with tiles showing powers of two up to 2048.  On some of them, the tiles drop down and match to multiply to the next highest number.  On others, the numbers are just decoration and you slide or match blocks for whatever reason.  The "classic" 2048 puzzle is a 4x4 grid where when you slide up, down, right or left, ALL tiles slide as far as they can go in that direction and double up where there's a match.

That makes for a really interesting feel, where every time you try to match one pair of tiles (or even line them up) all the other tiles move as well.  But I find that with just a moment's thought before each move, I can keep on doubling and reach the 2048 about 75% of the time, even on a 5x5 or 6x6 board.  Both apps I have been playing let you continue past 2048.

There is a very particular feel to these moves, and the tiles seem to flow in a pattern as I make my moves, but I can't pin down exactly what is going on.  In fact, the more I think about a move, the more the game seems to bog down and fill in with clutter.  But since one new tile is added every turn, the overall tile count only goes up if we miss making a match. 

Most of the time I just look at the edges.  If one choice of moves will push two 2s over to an edge next to a 4 and an 8, I can probably sweep the bunch into a 16, and then look back to see the whole layout has been slightly simplified by other merges I wasn't planning.  It can be a real chore to get two specific tiles to line up the way we want them to.n  You have to count the tiles in each direction and figure which column you need to merge something to get rid of an extra tile so your targets will line up.

If every move was clean, we could just make a 16 then store all the next numbers into a 32, then bring in the next set into a single 64, but the baggage does add up.

The challenge comes from the fact that hseries 2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256-1024-2048 takes up 10 tiles of the 16 or 25 or 36 available on the board layout.  You may not have every one of those tiles, but you probably have 4 or 5 each of the 2s and 4s and any one time, and probably a few higher pairs you would like to get rid of.  And the new tiles seem to come in at awkward spots, so that you get a glob of the unmatchable 2-4-2-4 pattern filling in what used to be empty movable spaces.

The game doesn't even need powers of two on the tiles. It would do just as well playing from 1 to 20, or A to Z, or with a bunch of smiley faces.  Just having numbers on the tiles makes Anne think it's more complicated than it really is.  You're really just matching tiles, but even the specter of doing math is enough to put some people off.

I just saw a woman playing this in the waiting room at the emergency room.  It's an enjoyable little time-eater.