No, not the year, the game. What game, you ask? Well, that’s why I’m here to talk about it. 2048 is an online game that I was first introduced to as a Chrome extension on the school Chromebooks. Somewhat like fidget spinners (see previous post), I was hesitant to try it. After all, it was just a fad, and how interesting could a bunch of numbers on the screen be? But I caved, and, the fad long passed, I am one of the people who still plays it regularly.
2048 is a math game that uses incessant doubling. How does it work? You start with two numbers somewhere in the grid (which is four by four). These first numbers are either two or four. You use the arrow keys to move all pieces in the grid as far in one direction as they can possibly go (obstructions being the edge or other numbers). If they hit another piece of the same number value they join to become double their value. With each move, either a two or a four is added to the grid in some random open space. Each time you combine numbers, your score goes up by the value of the number they turned into (an eight plus an eight equals a sixteen plus sixteen points). The game ends when you fill up every space on the board and cannot combine anything.
Officially, the goal of the game is to reach 2048. At first this confused me. I’d already reached 2048. Heck, my record is seven thousand something. Finally, a friend of mine realized that I was confused and explained to me that the goal wasn’t the score, it was the actual number tile 2048, which I had and have not reached, but he had. Void of this, I look at the goal as attempting to beat my high score, which the extension saves so that whenever I pull it up at school I can continue attempting to reach it.
There are alternate versions of 2048, enough so to have an entire website of variations. These use images to represent the numbers. There’s an Infinity War version, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Harry Potter… and that’s just scratching the surface (there are multiple of these, so I just chose one of each to put up here). Especially considering that I don’t like math games, 2048 is lots of fun and something I can safely say I am glad to have tried.
