The Rise and Rise of 2048
The rise of 2048 has been exponential. Since its introduction to my friend group 7 days ago, most conversations seem be along the topic of…
The rise of 2048 has been exponential. Since its introduction to my friend group 7 days ago, most conversations seem be along the topic of these fiendish powers of 2. A blog seems appropriate.
Stage 1: Encounter of the 2^nth kind
The Marhvelous [sic] Greg showed me the game originally and it was interest at first button push. I’m not sure why it should be so enticing, but with it’s clean interface and well-chosen colour palette, combining things easily finds its way to your pleasure centers. If you haven’t played it, do. But only once you have finished any upcoming deadlines. As I said, it’s been a week.
Stage 2a: Tinkering (CONTAINS STRATEGIC ADVICE)
Surely there’s got to be a strategy? You hope so at least. You notice that by putting your big numbers in a corner they are more combinable without getting in the way of the smaller stacks. Armed with this knowledge you share it with your friends.
Stage 2b: The Race Begins
It seems so simple, get 2048. But every second you waste, one of your friends maybe eschewing their responsibilities also and coming ever closer to that beautiful numbered lozenge. It’s a winner takes all competition with cries of “who remembers the second man to run the 4 minute mile?” echoing around your friend group (It was John Landy. And before you complain about the obvious analogy being people on the moon, you don’t know my friends. They know the 2¹th man on the moon. They probably even know the 2³.58th). You toy with using paint.
Credit to Ollie Lansdowne. He apologises to all you font nerds.
Stage 3: The Tears Begin
You cry like a wounded animal as you are unfairly beaten to the prize by someone with fewer time pressures but no discernibly greater IQ (in your modest opinion), be it Steve from the animal care department using the fact that the bears are still hibernating or the sabbatical officers of your Junion Common Room (the student body in my college) deciding to take Friday as their “morning off”. It’s humble pie for you and they spend a lot of time smugly musing on the nature of their premiership. You wish you’d used paint/failed your summative presentation.
Well played boys.
Stage 4: Scoring
Now that the big prizes has (as far as you are concerned anyway) gone, you move on to scoring. Is it possibly to finish with 2 concurrent 2048s? (Theoretically, but I have been, as yet, unable.) What’s the lowest score you can manage? Timed races? Throughout this your receive threats from your peers for the damage you have done to their schedules, sleeping patterns, relationships. It’s around this point when the dreams begin. You close your eyes and can only see squares colliding into sequentially higher powers of 2. You think of combining plates, pots, similar-looking friends to see if they will morph into some superior version.
That’s not my actual best score.
Stage 5. Interest Wanes The Game Changes
Just as your were about to move back to cookie clicker (no I won’t give you a link, trust me, you don’t want that) you realise some guy named Emil has built a two player version and while you and your friends were talking about whether there is a perfect strategy some guy was programming an AI version. You read his notes in a bid to understand this demigod before watching the computer tear up the tiles.
Stage 6: The Game Changes Again..
Somebody builds this monstrosity. You play for 20 minutes before your friend tells you it will take ~71 million years to complete (at 2 moves a second) meaning you should have started in the Cretaceous period. Your success is mocked by fake trumpets. Doge.
The colours don’t even change after 8192. Credit to Josh Wilkes (I didn’t get past 4096)
Stage 7: Paradigm Shift
Seven days ago you were sitting under the apple tree and realisation came that all pairs of objects are attracted along a lines joining their centers of mass. Today you wake up and your twin returns from their relativistic journey to tell you that along with seeing you hit by that apple just 5 minutes before, time and space are relative and 2048 now has 4 dimensions. There are now 8 keys to press. You twist your mind round the problem… And you play.
My thanks go to Gabriele Cirulli and to all my friends with whom I have shared the rollercoaster ride (and stolen and published the funny bits). You can email Garbriele or donate if the game has given you enough pleasure that you might have bought it if you could (you can even donate bitcoins — good way to get rid of them before their value crashes).
<edit> Edits for quality. Also gee whiz on that bitcoin bad take</edit>