I’ve done that three times now, and all I want is that precious, precious 4096 tile. Then I told myself I’d quit when I got to 2048. But just like any other addiction, it teaches me to chase the dragon.
I’m pretty sure there’s a dopamine rush that hits my brain every time I accomplish this very minor task, and I’m pretty sure that dopamine rush is larger than anything I could get from drugs, sex, eating, or whatever else causes dopamine rushes (surprising note: I am not a scientist). Forget the 2048 tile-every time you swipe a pair of 2s into a 4, you feel like a king.
It turns the user into Charles Darwin plus God plus a galapagos turtle, or something. It’s like watching human evolution, but sped up. There’s something so rewarding about watching numbers collide so productively, forming beautiful new tiles with a mere swipe of the finger. The truth is that 2048 is absolutely the devil, and I’d be more than happy to give you ten reasons why this is the case. That’s because the devil’s greatest trick is proving he doesn’t exist, reader. Hey Shane, this seems like a fun math game. You lose when the grid fills up completely with no possible moves remaining, and you win when you combine and combine and combine and at last, in a moment of triumph, create the hallowed 2048 tile. Tiles of the same value can be combined by swiping left, right, up, or down to create a new tile of twice the original value, so that two 4s combine into an 8, two 8s into a 16, and so on. If you’ve never played it on iPhone or Android, let me describe it for you-there are numbered tiles on a 4×4 grid, and each time you make a move, a new tile spawns in an empty space. If there is any justice in the world, we would extradite and imprison this person on whatever’s left of Alcatraz, for he has brought great suffering to our planet and our nation and deserves to be gawked at by tourists and eventually attacked by sharks during a desperate escape attempt. Wikipedia tells me that 2048, the single-player puzzle game that has ruined my life, was created in March 2014 by a 19-year-old Italian named Gabriele Cirulli. As mentioned at the bottom of this piece, 2048 is a blatant clone of a better and more stylish game called Threes.