For those who haven't heard of Threes, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the original game that 1024, 2048 etc were cloned from (and I think it's still the best by far). Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threes#Legacy
Thank you for your comment. I wanted to add that credit should indeed be given where it's due and that while I didn’t mention Threes in my original post, it has played a significant role in 2048’s existence. Threes is credited on the play2048.co site (and now also on GitHub), and I’ve always tried to acknowledge its influence.
That said, I think there’s a balance to strike. As I mentioned before, I created 2048 before I became aware of Threes, and while it’s important to credit inspiration, I’m not convinced that every creative project needs to trace back every indirect influence. 2048 began as a small experiment without any intent of gaining popularity, and it grew into something distinct, shaped by the viral spread and its community of its open-source variations.
I understand the value of recognizing origins, but I also believe 2048 has developed its own identity over time. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m always open to improving where needed. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Humans are incapable of absolutely original thought - whether our inspirations are conscious, sub-conscious or fabricated.
Wordle was just...
DropBox was just...
the iPhone was just...
Modern movies are just...
Don't allow others to dismiss your work. They are jealous they didn't do it first - which begs the question - if it was _just_.... then why didn't _they_ do it?
I was originally frustrated with your game and jealous of you for awhile, too.
I feel like this is a bit misleading. You say you weren’t aware of Threes at all when you made 2048, which may be technically true, but then you should probably clarify that 2048 was a clone of 1024 which was a clone of Threes. And this all happened within around a month of when Threes released… to the point where many people started accusing Threes of being a clone of 2048.
It seems like you are piling on just to pile on, not simply "pointing out the origin". There's already 52 matches for "Threes" on this submission. I think we get it. The author of has added credits to Threes. You won!
If this was your only comment, I wouldn't have said anything. But you have 5 (now 6!) separate comment chains going on about Threes. In addition to the other 5 top-level comments, and ~20 replies that talk about Threes. All saying the same stuff.
I didn't post any top level comments, I'm only correcting people who I see posting misinformation. Isn't the point of Hacker News for people to talk about things they have expertise in? This happens to be a situation I know a lot about since I was also a mobile puzzle game developer at the same time this happened.
>Isn't the point of Hacker News for people to talk about things they have expertise in?
No. Although that certainly can help, it's not the main point.
From the guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Seeing the exact same thing posted about Threes in over half of the comments here is the opposite of gratifying one's intellectual curiosity. It's boring. Especially when the comment is just a slight rephrasing of a comment that's already been posted several times (or worse, solely a link to your own comment elsewhere in the submission).
Oh come on, you're not really going to claim that my comment where I linked to my other comment is the problem, vs the person who initially told me "Let it go, Matt.".
And for the record my initial comment was bringing up new information anyway, since I was the first and only person to point out that OP cloned 1024 rather than Threes directly.
Please don't do this. 13 comments on this is too much, and (as is typical) they've gotten progressively more off-topic and flamewarrish.
When people start arguing about what they did or didn't say, with swipes like "Oh come on," it's clear that curious conversation was left behind quite a while ago and it's time to stop.
I get why you'd want to get rid of this thread, but surely the problem was caused the much earlier comment from doppp that said "Let it go, Matt". From what I've seen in the past, you would usually remove that kind of personalized negative response, but not in this case?
I hear you, but different people draw the what-caused-it line completely differently—it basically always feels like the other person started it and did worse (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's like the old adage "The whole fight started when he hit me back."
The reason I replied to you is that your account was producing quite a bit more than the other accounts in this repetitive and dyspeptic discussion.
While it's unfortunate that the Threes team didn't receive a proper recognition, I believe the popularity of 2048 mainly comes from the fact that it can be, in some sense, "finished" unlike Threes. Yes, you can continue after 2048, but it was a good milestone that is initially hard but can be done relatively easily once you've got the hang of it. The clear milestone makes every game play much more disposable unlike Threes, even though you can surely continue even after that. (I did play Threes a bit before 2048 got popular and realized this in retrospect.) The same principle applies to more recent Suika Game and I still find it amusing that the only major change for both was the title.
Hmm, I'd guess that difference isn't significant for the vast majority of players. And for those that care, the greater depth of Threes is surely an advantage.
I think 2048 became more popular because it was a) on the web, and b) free, whereas Threes was only on the iPhone and cost a few bucks.
Oh, and c) the OP, to give him his due credit, did a really nice job with it! It had the same kind of simplicity and virality as Wordle.
Suika Game has the same core mechanic (and many clones) but still represents a fundamentally different game. The gameplay is not even in the same category, as it involves some kind of physical simulation.
... or did you mean that Suika Game itself wasn't the original game with the falling-circles mechanic?
More like the latter, but not exactly (and that's my fault, sorry). As I said, 2048 is primarily distinguished from Threes by its title which implies the clear milestone. While the author of 2048 probably didn't intend this---after all, it is a clone of another clone 1024---, it seems that the Threes team also overlooked this to me. The title Suika Game also seems to share this quality probably by accident, which was what I originally meant to say.
... As effective as those titles are, I suddenly find myself imagining an alternate timeline with games and franchises like Bowser Bash, Quest for the Triforce, 25 Lines, Megalopolis, The Space Race, Shadaloo Smackdown....
As Threes was getting famous I bought it and tried a bit, but it didn't really stick.
It's with 2048 that I actually got hooked, it felt like a more natural and seamless game to play. I think it's the simplicity (no cuteness, no craftyness) that helps abstract the game, and of course dealing with powers of two makes it all the more natural. It felt a lot easier to get in and out of the game, be it for 30 sec to check the train station or 4 hours until lunch break.
I feel like Threes was the cute and whimsical game, while 2048 could probably become the classic game, in the same kind of spot as Tetris.
> It's the original game that 1024, 2048 etc were cloned from
This argument has always been silly.
Three's didn't invent sliding tile games. Sliding tile games existed going back to the 1980s and 2048's mechanics are different enough that I don't even think they're comparable.
They've existed in wood for a lot longer than that.
It's not different to 1024, and not giving credit where it's due is not unintentional. It's like making a falling blocks game with tetrominoes, but the board is 20 blocks wide, and you "forgot" to mention that it's inspired by Tetris.
Threes was (I believe) the first iOS game I actually paid money for. You could tell that the author was a true craftsperson who really cared about every detail of the product. It always felt unjust that the clones got all the attention, and now the nostalgia.
Threes would have worked fine as a free web game if they prioritized attention, but they chose to make it an iOS only paid app, presumably because they preferred making money over gaining attention. That's a very reasonable tradeoff in my book, I'd rather have money in pocket than stranger's upvotes.
>2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (that you'll see hidden in the emails below). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. We’d wager most people that have been able to score a 768 or even a 384 in Threes would be able to do the same using the fabled “corner strategy”. You probably could too! Just try tapping “up” then “right” in alternating order until you can’t move. Then press left. You may not get to a 2048, but you might just see your highest score ever.
>When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken.
From my experience, this greatly overstates the "exploit". In 2048 you get to maybe 128 this way typically before you can't move up/right any more, then you have to start thinking after the left press. Basically whenever you slide away from the "preferred" corner, supposing your plan is to slide back promptly, there's always a chance that a random spawn gets in your way and complicates the plan. Getting to 2048 on the first try doesn't sound like a modal experience at all. (Of course, most new 2048 players won't have had the experience of developing Threes first.)
For that matter, the developer talks about how rare it is to see a 6144, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that reaching a 4096 in 2048 is far more difficult than reaching 2048.
At any rate, it's not at all immediately clear why having the player join 1+2 first before making blocks of 3*2^n, should noticeably improve the gameplay over having only powers of two. So IMO it's not that the gameplay of 2048 is fundamentally less interesting; the implementation just sets a lower standard.
(Though for what it's worth, I've wondered how it might go with the Fibonacci sequence - allowing 1s to merge either with 2s or other 1s.)
You just have to play Threes for a few hours and it becomes obvious it’s a much more interesting and deep game than 2048. Of all the things that can be debated about this situation, that feels like the biggest stretch of all.
I don't mean to "debate" the depth of Threes (having not played it), only to say that it isn't obvious from a description. On the other side of the equation, 2048 is clearly interesting enough to have sold (and, from what I can tell, marketed by word of mouth), and its players would seem to disagree with the Threes author that 2048 is "a broken game". The corner shake might seem like a tedious but powerful strategy; but it doesn't come anywhere close to trivializing the object of the game, and this is a casual time-waster anyway.
2048 might well have won out for its simplicity (although personally I think the audio had a lot to do with it). Screenshots of Threes development (from the page linked in the post I quoted) imply that for quite a while it allowed for making numbers of any 2^x*3^y form, and earlier versions of the game must have tried even more complex rules - even larger prime numbers like 79 show up. Eventually this reduced to only numbers of the form 2^x*3 (as well as 1 and 2). To me that looks like a strange left-over irregularity, even if it does improve gameplay.
(After reading the rest of the thread, I think I regret replying at all.)
Hasn't 2048 always been free? When comparing a paid game with a clone that's free (or even "free-to-play with obnoxious ads and lootbox mechanics" not that 2048 is that) the latter will usually become more popular, and that certainly happened here.
I am not sure how I feel about it. I certainly don't believe anyone should be able to legally own an idea like "sliding tile number games based on powers of 2 with or without being multiplied by 3" but I also don't have a lot of respect for those who, lacking an original idea, resort to cloning someone else's creative work (or in 2048's case, I guess, cloning another clone). So I guess I have no problem with them existing, but don't feel any desire to give them accolades or to play their game.
I paid something like $2 CAD in the Nintendo eShop for a 3DS version. (If it's a clone, it hews very close to the original.) I guess I can't be sure it's supposed to work like that.
Try getting the 32768 tile in 2048. Yes, it can be done somewhat consistently, but it requires a deep and somewhat subtle strategy. Furthermore, the “snake” formation that every player learns at the beginning stops being optimal at a certain point, and thus the late game has much more variety than the early game. I do think that Threes is more complex, but I’m not sure if this complexity is really necessary.
I don’t agree that it is obvious that it is more interesting or deep. I have played a lot of hours of Threes and it is mildly more complex because the tiles only move 1 square at a time, but in my opinion that doesn’t actually make it more interesting or deep.
you're right, it's not an "exploit"; it is literally the gameplay. go watch anyone play 2048 for more than 9 seconds and then try to tell me that isn't the case...
and why is the fact that the difference between threes and 2048 "not immediately obvious" salient... at all? what is it even supposed to mean? i'm not so great at number theory... that doesn't make me think that all those people are gods among humans. same with the obverse: i am really good at geometry, so honestly are we sure that the ancient greeks were even good at math? it's not immediately obvious to me that geometry even is math. they didn't even have calculators for god's sake!
I don't understand the peeve people have about mentioning Threes all the time. Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever? The vitriol in some of the comments here are quite weird to me.
It's also dishonest to label 2048 as a clone. Personally I never cared much for Threes, and same I guess with my parents etc which all got hooked for a while on 2048. 2048 strikes a good balance on being accessible and challenging, most people don't want it more complicated or deeper.
If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously. Instead, many people act as if 2048 was a slight on Threes somehow, stealing their thunder. I actually bought Threes based on all the comments back then, but didn't really like it. Too cutesy, and too challenging when I just wanted to mindlessly swipe.
Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
It's a fair question, but Doom and Quake were both very famous and successful.
What sticks in my craw a bit with Threes is that the clones came out really fast, and 2048 in particular because much more famous and successful, so Threes never really got the chance to shine as much as it deserved (except when die-hard fans like me keep coming out of the woodwork to hype it, as you say). And I still think Threes has a much better and deeper game design than any of the clones!
If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
It's not that I resent the success of 2048 -- to the contrary, the OP did a great job with it and the success is deserved. But I assume that many people who have heard of 2048 have not heard of Threes, and I'd like them to try it, because it's great.
>If one of the many clones and variants of Wordle had been a runaway success, and the excellent original had been relatively overlooked and forgotten, I'd similarly be promoting Wordle in threads like this.
Why? It's not a job, or even a fun hobby, to try and ensure forgotten things get the recognition they deserve.
I'm surprised it's hard to understand! I see it as like recommending a cult movie or book to people -- that's not an unusual thing to do, right? Like when you're talking about time travel movies and there's always that one person who pops up and says "OK, but have you seen Primer? You should see Primer!"
> Does every discussion about a FPS game need to point out it's the same concept as Doom or Quake or whatever?
Well the great differentiator between puzzle games is the idea of the playing mechanism. The great differentiator between FPS is implementation. If I make an FPS, I didn’t really steal from Doom because the idea is pretty obvious. But if I make a sliding game that’s very similar to 2048, you might say I stole the idea. It’s like with patents, subjectively the mechanism of a FPS shouldn’t be patentable to me, but three or 2048 might be.
I think there can be a different line drawn for "what should be patentable or legally protected" and "what should be celebrated as creativity."
A clone of Tetris where the line pieces are 5 blocks tall, for instance, is not notable or creative. But also, I think someone should be legally free to make it if they're not infringing Tetris's trademarks or stealing their code.
>If anything, the 2048 hype must have helped Threes tremendously.
This. I've never heard anyone mention Threes outside of a sub discussion about 2048. For all the people here that claim to love it, it has had very little impact outside of being discussed as being similar to, or a precursor of, 2048.
I agree: even if the descriptions of Threes (never played it) are only half true, they are completely different genres: one is a deep puzzler that aims for the kind of challenge that some absolutely do require to accept a game as entertainment but many others would consider borderline work, the other is a super casual routine builder that derives its quality only from the challenge of balancing full autopilot mode with maintaining a bit of attention. I 'd guess that not only would the latter have failed (silently, not spectacularly) if the author had tried to sell it on some app store instead of just putting it out on the web, the former would just as certainly not have gone viral like 2048 did. I absolutely do share your belief that 2048 (and the resulting discussions) has sold far more Threes than Threes ever did, or rather than Threes would have in a timeline where 2048 never happened.
(PS: and on a more meta level, people like us feeling super clever about "2048 helped Threes!" might be the secret sauce responsible for much of the longevity of the games' shared virality)
I still play Threes regularly. It’s super accessible but still remains challenging after years of play. I even occasionally still set a new high score.
