After going frenzy over Flappy Bird, players have found a new game to keep themselves involved, it is the puzzle game 2048 which was created by developer Gabriele Cirulli on 9 March 2014. The game is based on Veewo Studio's 1024 and Asher Vollmer's Threes.
The game is based on an open source software where developers can make creative additions, variants and better interface. The game had crossed 4 million visitors within a week, said Hacker News. The game has been compared to Flappy Bird and is even compared with Candy Crush for its addictiveness.
The game is played on a 4×4 board with tiles of different colors which can slide when moved by the player. The player uses arrows keys to control the tile to move it inside the board. If two tiles collide, then they will merge and form a new tile with their existing values added up. If a tile has a higher score, then it will have a faint glow on it. A new tile will enter the game with values of 2 or 4 only.
There is a scoreboard on the top right that keeps track of the score created by the player, starting from zero. The game shows both the best score along with the current score. If a player is able to create the value of 2048 on a single tile, then they can still continue to play to make a high score and enjoy the game.
Players must know that the game will spawn two random tiles when the game starts. The player will get four possible move per position subjective to space on the board.
2048 game is available for free on iOS, Android devices and on web. It has topped the charts of free games on iTunes and Google Stores.
Below we provide cheats, hints and tricks to make a high score and win the game. YouTube user, SC Runner posted a video detailing his three simple steps to win the game:
1. Arrow restriction: basically use right and down, carefully up and never left
2. Always 'fix' the 4th column
3. Always keep the 4th column sorted
He further adds additional tips:
- If you focus on building the 4th column, you'll learn how best to build the 3rd.
- Advanced technique: left arrow is useful to recover from the situation where the 4th column is unsorted. In that case, don't forget to 'fix' the 3rd and 4th rows by filling them in.
- Recovery tip: To recover from the situation like tile [3][4]=1024 and tile [4][4]=2, use arrows including Left and push 1024 into a different corner. Then do the 'change-of-gravity' (change the arrow restriction accordingly).
- Concentrate and think ahead. One small mistake can ruin the game especially in the later stage of the game.
(YouTube Courtesy: SC Runner)
In 'the definitive guide to winning 2048,' The Daily Dot gives out ways to win as in the following:
1. Build numbers side to side - Build 4's and 8's on your side.
2. Collapse upwards - If you have 8's and 16's collapse them. Keep the top row with high numbers.
3. Focus on a corner - Focus on upper-right corner with the 64 and the 128.
4. Build chains - Start a chain of numbers building on two 16's, 32, 64, and 128.
5. Be lucky - Sometimes you have to be lucky to get the right numbers.
6. Never swipe down.
Below is a hack cheat from Pictures of Nepal that will allow you to get the Special 2048 tile:
1. Do not use the up arrow key until you cannot move any further
2. Make sure that the high value tiles are at the bottom of the board and arrange the tiles from descending order from left to right in the last row and right to left in second last row.
3. Now merge the 8 and 8 tiles to get 16, 16 and 16 tiles to get 32, until you get 2048 tile.
Photo credit: gabrielecirulli.github.io
(Edited by Anu James)
