App Review No. 62 2048

Strong Points:
Crisp and clear art style
Simple gameplay
Challenges add more stuff to do
Multiplayer is a good extra
Addictive gameplay

Weak Points:
Can get repetitive
Can be rather frustrating
Challenges can be very hard from early on

In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: 19th March, 2014

Controls:
Swipe the screen to move the tiles.

2048 is yet another fun and addictive game on the app store. This one involves you sliding numbers around a board and into each other in order to get bigger numbers. You start with two numbers (either a 2 and a 2 or a 2 and a 4) and you can slide them up, down, left and right. Each time you slide a tile, another tile appears. When you slide your finger across the screen, every tile will move as far as they can without hitting another tile or the side of the board.

So that you can get a bigger numbers, you have to combine tiles of the same number. For example, hitting a 2 and a 2 together will merge them into a 4 and hitting two 4's together will form an 8 whereas hitting a four and a 2 together won't create anything. But what does it matter if you don't manage to create a bigger number? Well there are two reasons why you want to. The first one is obvious and it is that combining numbers lets you get a higher score. The second reason is that by making a bigger number, you also remove one tile from the board. This is important as, when the board is full of tiles that aren't adjacent to another tile of the same number (i.e two tiles that can combine), you lose the game. And, as the board is only 8 by 8 tiles, this can happen quite quickly.

Of course, by getting bigger and bigger numbers, it becomes harder and harder to combine them. For example, in order to get a 128 tile, you will have to get two 64 tiles which means you need to have had four 32 tiles, eight 16 tiles, sixteen 8 tiles, thirty-two 4 tiles and sixty-four 2 tiles. This is why the game can require quite a bit of thinking ahead (randomly spamming directional swipes also works but will only get you so far).

There are also the 64 (at the time of writing) fiendishly difficult challenge levels which have you trying to get a certain amount of certain numbered tiles which adds to the depth of things to do, considerably. As well as this, there is also the multiplayer mode (VS and Co-op). VS mode involves you having three minutes in which to try to get a higher score than your opponent (which is shown once the three minuets are over). If you manage to fill up the board then your score will be saved and the board will be wiped which lets you try again. I think that this mode is quite well thought out and well done. Co-op, on the other hand is not so well done. This is due to the fact it involves two or more players controlling the same board in order to get a high score. The reason why this isn't very good is that there is no way to communicate to the other player online which makes it all about guess work.

Overall, 2048 is yet another very good time wasting game which also contains a couple of very well thought out modes and a great graphical design. Now it's time to get that elusive 2048 tile.

Rating: 70%

Goodbye for now, Harry

Updates: bug fixes (including the share score option bug on iPad) and optimizations