2048 is Italian Gabriele Cirulli's Mathematical answer to Flappy Bird - HTML5 Time-Wasting Fun like Threes! with 3D Gaming Potential on Facebook's Oculus Rift VR

With Flappy Bird long forgotten, pulled from the Google Plan and Apple iTunes store by its creator by Dong Nguyen as reported in my blog article entitled “Developer Dong Nguyen takes down US$50000 a day Flappy Bird App - Unwanted Media Attention leaves DotGears Game as the first In-App Advertising Gaming App”, it seems a new light has been cast upon the Mobile Gaming World.

Since then, I’ve penned a few articles on other Mobile Games in a bid to make my fellow Jamaicans realize that there’s money to be made from developing Video Games as well as to highlight the various business Models used to make money. So here goes another one about the recent HTML5 Free Gaming phenomenon known as 2048 as described in “2048 is the new Flappy Bird in so many ways”, published March 20, 2014 1:07 PM PDT by Eric Mack, CNET News.

This is basically a free version of the popular Game Threes! as described in my blog article entitled “Threes!, an Engaging Mathematics Puzzle Game for Apple iOS - Sudoku in Multiples of Three by Sirvo LLC Design Trio should be Inspiration to Game Developers in Jamaica”.

That’s where the comparison to this Flappy Bird pretender to the Throne ends, as Italian programmer Gabriele Cirulli who published 2048 on his GitHub Website, claim no similarities, citing that it’s more like 1024, an app on the Apple iTunes Stores, only with a bigger score!

So why the Flappy Bird Comparisons?

Like that famed Game for smartphones, this Website only PC and Tablet Game (playing on a smartphone is difficult!) is easy to play when it just starts out, but gets progressively harder the higher the levels get. And like Threes!, all you have to do is match a few Tiles with the same number on them by sliding them with your mouse or finger. Your aim is to add the Tiles together and thus make higher and higher sums, doubling the score and thus coming closer and closer to the top namesake score of 2048!

Each move uses up space on the Board, so you must carefully swipe left or right or up and down to match Tiles with the same number, the lowest possible number Tile appearing on the board being 2 or 4. Unlike Threes!, a new Tile is always a 2 or a 4 and can pop up randomly anywhere on the board instead of coming down Tetris-Style from above, making creating larger sums easy!

How to beat 2048 – Mathematical Sudoku Time Travel and a Little Planning are required

Beating the Game is a lot easier than Threes! however. All you have to do is observe a few basic rules while playing the Game. Like Sudoku, the Corner is always a great place to start.

You can build your Strategy around grouping together larger Tiles that are in that Corner of your choice. This is helpful as it stays put when the right Tile (or space-time in this 2 dimensional Game?) comes for a match. At that point, you’re ready to slide beside, making it disappear and thus gain a higher score Tile.

However, it restricts you to 2 moves at a time. In my case, I have a preference for the Lower Right Corner (maybe because I’m left-brained, right handed person!), thus restricting me to moves downwards or to the Right.

Gridlock is sure to be coming fast, so avoid pulling in directions opposite to that Corner Tile you’ve chosen. To avoid this, always makes sure the next largest multiple below your largest Tile in the Corner is ever present e.g. if you have 512 in the Corner, make sure you have 256 beside it. This is the essence of the Corner Strategy!

Summing two Tiles in the opposite direction to your largest Tile makes sure this is always the case. This reduces the possibility of a Gridlock and thus creates more opportunities to add higher multiples to create a large one to add to your Corner Tile.

Scores of 1024 should be easily achievable this way. Then the Game suddenly starts to get difficult as avoiding rectangular-build up of Tiles, rendering the Corner Strategy useless. At this point, you need abandon the above Corner Strategy and actually pull on the Rectangle downwards, creating space for another set of 2's and 4's to appear, a Strategy that I call the Rectangle Strategy.

This is because at that point, above the Rectangular block is the ONLY place the Game can place more 2's and 4's, so 2048 gives you the option to do this and thus prevent Gridlock.

However, be careful with the Rectangle Strategy!

Never allow the 2's to overwhelm your board, always taking every opportunity to slide and sum them up to 4's, 8's and 16's, always maintain a higher multiple beside another higher multiple, with you highest being in your favorite Corner! That way if you have a buildup towards a Gridlock being initiated by larger multiples, you'll have a ready supply of 16's. These you can easily slide and combine to create multiples you can sum and create even higher multiples in your Corner, freeing up the board tremendously.

Another noteworthy point in 2048 is that once you focus on maintaining the Corner Strategy and utilizing the Rectangle Strategy in times of trouble, you'll notice that just like Games like PopCap’s Bejeweled and iWin’s JewelQuest, King’s Candy Crush Saga and even Rovio’s Juice Cubes as explained in my blog article entitled “Rovio Juice Cubes is a Freemium In-App Purchase Gold Bar Mine - To get to Level 200, you have to become Goldfinger but Crypto-currency will make In-App Purchases tolerable”, the Tiles will naturally come and combine with each other!

This keeps the board clear for other Tiles to appear. Doing all the above strategies, both the Corner Strategy as well as the Rectangle Strategy will maintain an active higher value in the Corner at all times as you power towards the elusive 2048 score and beyond.

2048 is a 2D Game with 3D Potential – Crypto-currency Mining will make this Game take off

Like Threes! as described in my blog article entitled “Threes!, an Engaging Mathematics Puzzle Game for Apple iOS - Sudoku in Multiples of Three by Sirvo LLC Design Trio should be Inspiration to Game Developers in Jamaica”, 2048 is very engaging and tempts you to believe it is beatable in the early stages with easy scores.

But once you start getting deeper into the Game and closer to the elusive 2048 score, the Game turns it up a notch. One then wonders what would happen to the difficulty level if Games like 2048 were to not only get the 3D Treatment but also the Oculus Rift VR (Virtual Reality) Treatment.

This as Facebook, now having acquired 2 year old company Oculus Rift, makers of the KickStarter funded VR Headset as stated in “Facebook to buy Oculus for $2 billion”, published March 25, 2014 5:35 PM PDT by Jennifer Van Grove, CNET News, may seek to have Game Developers develop 3D Versions of their Games, thus enticing Gamers to pay premium Charges to own an Oculus Rift VR Headset and play these Games.  

To make the game even more enticing, games like 2048, Threes!, PopCap’s Bejeweled and iWin’s JewelQuest, King’s Candy Crush Saga and even Rovio’s Juice Cubes can include Crypto-Currency Mining. Each time you collect a coin or valuable jewel in the Games, it sends a request to a bank of Servers to mine a particular Crypto-Currency of choice and deposits the mined crypto-currency in an Online Wallet of your choosing.

Unlike the Apps in the articles “Millions of Android app downloads infected with cryptocoin-mining code”, published Thursday 27 March 2014 13.17 GMT by Stuart Dredge, The UK Guardian and “Google cracks down on dodgy Android apps”, published March 31, 2014 By Michelle Starr, CNET News, it would be known to the user, allowing you the user to actually make virtual money while they play their favourite games.

Jamaican Game Developers take note!

All money mentioned are tied to having a US Credit Card that can receive payments or a virtual Wallet to store Crypto-Currency, the new Babylonian System of Currency for the Digital Age. But combining a verified PayPal Account with a Scotia VISA Debit Card or CIBC VISA Debit Card and some Game Developer skills, you can tie an In-App advertising Revenue System into your Game.

As a Game Developer you can make money in the same manner from Video Games as described in my blog article entitled “Animation after KingstOOn - How to make a Video Game for PC, Smartphone and Tablet”.

Italian programmer Gabriele Cirulli merely shows another way to achieve this goal, as it won’t be long before his very popular yet clearly free HTML5 Game will be ported to the Apple iTunes Store and the Google Play Store and eventually attract the interest of Game Console Studios, starting with Facebook’s Oculus Rift!

Here’s the link to 2048:

2048 on his GitHub Website