2048

I never know what the world looks like outside my little internet bubble.  I'm often surprised when I bring something up that has, from my perspective, been talked about constantly for weeks and people don't know what I'm talking about.  I have a feeling this 2048 game is a case of this.

http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/

It has spawned an absurd number of forks and variants.  At one point there were 10 threads about it on the top 100 posts on hackernews.  I thought it was some crazy new revolutionary technology.  Nope, silly flash game.

Anyway, while I didn't care about the original that much, one of the clones has already eaten several hours of my (very valuable) time.

http://prat0318.github.io/2048-tetris/

In case you haven't played any of these, the point is to move squares with the same number together and they will merge into a single square with the sum.  You end up with powers of 2, and are aiming for the highest possible value.  The goal being the eponymous 2048 square.

In the tetris version the pieces will fold together due to gravity, and can be quickly moved left and right for unlimited length combos.

The key is a good organization strategy, that is robust enough to handle the 4s and 8s.  I've gotten to 1024 a few times, but 2048 eludes me.


Another random variant, is this one where you are placing the blocks and the AI is playing against you collapsing them.

https://sphere.chronosempire.org.uk/~HEx/8402/