By Raymart Escopel
AFTER the popularity Candy Crush and Flappy Bird earned comes another addictive smartphone application guaranteed to drive its players crazy due to its simple yet mind-boggling mechanics.
Called 2048 puzzle, the said game is played on a simple gray square grid with tiles that vary in colors depending on the number it corresponds.
The player can smoothly slide the tiles in any direction (left, right, up, and down). Whenever two tiles of the same number collide, they will merge with one another and form one tile with the sum of the two numbers combined. The formed tile can be merged with another tile again as long as they have the same number until the player reach its goal of coming with a tile with the number 2048.
The player loses the game when there are no legal moves left – meaning, when there are no empty spaces left and no adjacent tiles with the same value appears.
The score of the player appears on the upper-right of the screen. Starts at zero, the player’s score increases whenever two tiles combine, by the value of the new tile. Just like other arcade games, the player’s best score is also shown together with the current one.
With the games simple mechanics same with Candy Crush, 2014 Puzzle is now called by Wall Street Journal as the Candy Crush for math geeks.
This single-player game was created by 19-year old Italian web developer Gabriele Cirulli on March and was released for iOS and Android free download on May 2014.
With its instant popularity, the game became trending among smartphone users as a perfect way for entertainment as well as kill time.
More than a number game, 2048 puzzle tests how the player strategizes to reach its goal. Though it may look simple at first, this game will give the player a hard time to choose the right move in winning the game./PN
