Flappy Bird, one of the most addictive games of recent times is all set to make a comeback to the Android Play Store and the iOS App Store. While many people are patiently awaiting its return, a new web based game, 2048 seems to have stolen Flappy Bird’s thunder, believes CNET .
At first glance, 2048 looks like yet another numbers game. But it is once you start playing it that you realize that it is as addictive as the good ol’ Flappy Bird. While Flappy Bird game-play needed the player to posses a lot of dexterity and concentration, 2048 would require you to use your brain. That said, it is not an extremely tough mathematical puzzle that is designed for people with a Mensa membership. The aim of this game is simple. Combine the same numbers on the board to ensure that one of the squares on the board reaches a total of 2048. You’ve got to do this before all the squares on the board get filled up in such a way that you cannot combine two of them anymore.
Quite different from the monotonous jump of Flappy Bird, eh?
When you “combine” two numbers, it essentially adds. For eg. when you merge a 2 with a 2, it becomes four. Combine and 8 and an 8, it becomes 16. The goal is to ensure that you continue this process till one of the squares hits the score of 2048. The way to combine two squares with the same number is to simply swipe in the direction the two similar numbers are located. In case you still haven’t figured out this, you better watch this video.
2048 is the brainchild of 19-year-old Italian UI designer and web developer Gabriele Cirulli who released the game as a web only version on Github. The “original” game is still a web-only affair and can be played here even on your phone using its browser. All the variants you see on the Play Store are unofficial versions.
Whether 2048 would exceed the interest that Flappy Bird generated soon after the latter’s arrival is something that would only time would tell. As of now, it seems the top Android game version has crossed over 100,000 downloads. Still a lot lesser than what Flappy Bird managed.
The addictive-ness of 2048 was bound to be compared with that of Flappy Bird, a simple game that went viral earlier this year. Back in January, Flappy Bird went on to become the most popular game for both iOS and Android. It grabbed worldwide media attention and was claimed to be among the most addictive games ever made. Thanks to the excessive amount of media scrutiny , the game and its developer Dong Nguyen received, he finally decided to pull the game from the web. He felt guilty about the fact that Flappy Bird was simply consuming too much time of the people addicted to it.
Flappy Bird or 2048? What do you think is more addictive?