2048 Mania

2048 is a puzzle video game, released on March 9, 2014, available on Web browser, mobile, iOS, Nintendo 3DS, Android devices, Apple TV, KaiOS and Teslatari. The game was developed by Gabriele Cirulli. 2048 was originally written in JavaScript and CSS, and was released on March 9, 2014, as free open source software, subject to a license under the MET License. There is also a version for the Linux emulator.

The fact that the game's license is free and open source has led other programmers to imagine many additions and independent variations of the original game, including versions with a scoreboard or improved touch playability, and hijackings. miscellaneous from the concept or rules of the original game, itself originally a modified copy of another game, Threes! by Asher Vollmer.

The object of the game is to slide tiles on a grid, to combine tiles of the same values ​​and thus create a tile with the number 2048. The player can however continue playing after this objective has been reached to achieve the best possible score.

Initially released under the MIT license, with no commercial or media pretensions, the game has received a lot of interest. The particularly addictive nature of 2048, in addition to being free, attracting it an immediate notoriety. The concept of the game is then copied many times and in particular ported in mobile application.

The game is often compared to Threes!, whose interface and game system are similar and was released a few months ago. Cirulli attests to having been inspired by a mobile game, 1024 from Veewo Studio, whose developer was himself inspired by Threes! by Asher Vollmer.

2048 is played on a grid of 4×4 squares, with tiles of various colors and values (but always powers of two) that can be moved with a scrolling animation when the player presses the arrow keys of their keyboard (or with the touch function on tablets and smartphones). For the highest values, the tiles slightly after the merger of the two previous tiles and change color.

The game's creator, Gabriele Cirulli, is a 20-year-old self-taught Italian web developer from the Friuli region.

This is his first game, which he created in a weekend. Regarding his motivation, he says: "by doing it, I wanted to have fun but also to learn new things". Posted on GitHub (a web hosting and software development management service) pending “feedback”, 2048 was quickly spotted by an Internet user. “From that moment on, my game became known,” he recounts.

Cirulli created the game as a test to see if he was able to create a program from scratch, and the immense popularity (over four million visitors in less than a week) was completely unexpected. In two weeks, his game has already recorded more than 75 million games played on the browser application.