Stately 11 years ago

It seems to be significantly easier to beat than 2048, but at the same time it's a bit challenging to get your head around matching three tiles instead of two. Good stuff.

BTW, change the favicon?

  • mishop 11 years ago

    Changed. Thank You :)

clarle 11 years ago

The heuristic that worked for me was similar to 2048, but not exactly the same.

I kept all of my highest tiles on one column of the board, and always kept it filled up (so that one row was "static"), like with 2048.

The difference this time was that I mainly incremented them by rows, and would only put together three in a column to match up a row.

rpsw 11 years ago

I bet this on the first go, without thinking of an in-depth heuristic. Maybe I was lucky, but it doesn't seem to hard.

I struggled with this version, which is kind of similar: http://joezeng.github.io/144/

  • aardvark179 11 years ago

    Yeah, this one doesn't seem so hard. Variants like 144 are a challenge because you can fill the board with tiles that can never lead to your goal, and it's easy to get into a situation where you can't help generating them.

    • mishop 11 years ago

      I thought I'd ask for a goal 3^6 (729). But this is impossible with this algorithm.

      243 243 243 x x

      81 81 81 x x

      27 27 27 x x

      9 9 9 x x

      3 3 3 x x

  • smaudet 11 years ago

    Not beat yet, but I don't think it is possible to algorithmically.

    144=3 x 48 ; 48=3 x 16

    16 is 'easy' to create - if you can avoid creating any three-pairs.

    The trick of this game is that you can have 3,4,5 pairs. There may be some ways to choose 4 and 5 pairs along with the easier 2 and 3 pairs to win it - my efforts so far with the simple strategy produced two 48 pairs, and a seemingly random chance at producing an elusive third 48th pair, so any solution I would think would be considerably more difficult, if one exists at all.

smaudet 11 years ago

Beat, not too hard.

But that's because I suspect the game would make it difficult/impossible to get beyond 243.

There isn't enough space for 3-chains, this was fine for 2-chains, but for 3-chains my winning move at the end was impossible without changing my strategy.

mishop 11 years ago

5% winers until now :) Or the players are too smart or the game is not too hard ?

  • stinos 11 years ago

    5% winers until now

    Where do you see that?

    • mishop 11 years ago

      Google Analytics - Events.

      • tlunter 11 years ago

        It's probably real wins, but this? ;)

        ga("send", "event", "game", "end", 'game-won', '1000000');

        • mishop 11 years ago

          Yes. This :)

  • XERQ 11 years ago

    If you're looking to add difficulty, it might make sense to remove a horizontal and vertical row and make it 4x4.

dfan 11 years ago

This is the first one of these in a while that felt qualitatively novel to me. Nice work!

I'd add at least one more level, since it should clearly be possible to reach higher tiles than 243.

gerry_shaw 11 years ago

I wish Threes! was this easy. Fun but too easy (beat it second time). This is a good thing for me so I won't waste more time on it :)

Thanks for making it though, was a fun distraction.

xbilldozer 11 years ago

Why must people continue to create new obsessions for me...

mishop 11 years ago

What about if I move target to 729 (3^6)?

RandomSpamMan 11 years ago

Still makes me sad that people are calling these 2048 clones when Threes started it all off.

  • chasing 11 years ago

    Don't see "clone" used anywhere. Just "inspired by." Which seems accurate, since this is more like 2048 than Threes.

qpes 11 years ago

It is very interesting that 2048 strategy doesn't work here.

mauricio-OH 11 years ago

I beat the game in the first try. Too easy.

saalweachter 11 years ago

This doesn't feel any harder to me than 2048. The same basic strategies seem to work about as well on both.

  • chatman 11 years ago

    Totally incorrect! The same strategy hardly working, i.e. the strategy of keeping the highest tiles on one corner of the board.

  • atoponce 11 years ago

    I find the same basic strategies don't hold up as well. It seems much easier for me to foul up because I need 3 in a row, rather than just 2.

    • Elessar 11 years ago

      Yeah, this variant forces you to clean up the (mental) heuristic you use you decide how best to combine blocks. With 2048 you could generally muddle your way through provided you ensured high blocks were in some corner. Here, because of the 3 combination, quite often I'll have a pair of high numbers blocking an entire row from shifting -- an issue you'd never have in the original.

igrice 11 years ago

it's addictive too. Again, playing games all day.