2048: 24 hours of a mobile game craze

By. Prologue

It always starts because you hear about something new from a friend. You know this person. You like this person. So when they suggest you play a new game, you take the idea into consideration. It seems innocent enough, it being just a game for your phone. Curiosity gets the better of you. The game is even free when you find it on your phone’s app store. Finally, you download it, and it consumes your life!

This friend of mine had given me recommendations before, and it always ended up in me spending too much time on the game. I can’t be happy until I’ve either finished the game, or I’ve won it, or what have you. It doesn’t help that my friend knows me pretty well. He knows my perfectionist tendencies, my love of color coordination, and my passion for deceptively simple games. 

The game 2048 has one goal: making one tile of that exact number. You have 12 spaces where random 2's and 4's appear. The player chooses two adjacent tiles of a similar value to double them. For example, 2+2=4, and then you take the 4 and match it with another 4, hence 4+4=8, and so on. Sure sounds simple, right? But the most addicting games are always the simplest. The goal of the game is doubling the numbers until you reach the sum of 2048. If you love math, this game is for you. If you hate math but are capable of matching tiles of the same number, this game is also for you. But of course, the game is much harder than it looks, and it's very addicting. 

It took me 24 hours to achieve the 2048 tile. I was happy. I was thrilled. I was over the moon! I screamed with the excess of victory. 

Then, the game congratulated me and told me what my new goal was: 4096.

That’s how it goes with the best mobile games. Victory is but a bittersweet aftertaste.