It's a nice narrative to think that the innovative product where they spent 1.5 years agonizing over the details is obviously superior to the derivative product banged out in a weekend, but that's not the case, in my opinion.
I much prefer 2048. The $2 I spent on threes was $2 well spent, but 2048 is the game I pick up when I want to play something. (although the game should have been called 4096).
2048 is a far worse game, there is literally no challenge to it. Granted I'm a big fan of threes but I can literally beat 2048 every single time I play it. I did a simple test one weekend and played 2048 to measure how many times in a row I could beat it. I got 15 and stopped out of boredom. I find it dumbfounding how anyone can compare the two and not find 2048 an extremely poor clone.
If you're winning 15 times in a row, you're not moving fast enough. The appeal of 2048 is that you move so quickly, it feels cathartic. If you're not moving fast enough to make the occasional mistake, then of course you're going to get bored. If you're not making mistakes, you're also missing out on the fun of digging yourself out of a hole.
And as I mentioned in my original post, the goal for me to get 4096 or over 50,000 points. 2048 is easy, 50,000 points isn't.
2048 is a very accessible game, which is a large part of it's appeal. Rather than adding levels of difficulty, the better variants use achievements (like my 4096 and 50,000 goals, and your time limits) to keep it fun once you've got the basics mastered.
But the point is these aren't parts of 2048, they're just things you're putting on it.
It may be, in effect, a customisable game but that feels accidental rather than anything the designer intended. I could make any game harder by drinking heavily before playing it but that external factor making the game more difficult hasn't really improved it as a game.
Worth saying, I'm not wild about either game. For me they're simply not rewarding and I found myself resenting rather than enjoying the time I spent on them.
Honestly I still disagree, I can still easily hit 50,000 points multiple times in a row. The mechanic is broken, it's a literally solved game. Even moving extremely fast I rarely have a problem hitting 4096. Left down ldldldldrldldldldr nearly always works for an infinitely high score.
I just tried it out again and I used a slightly modified version of the technique laid out in this article (Left-Down-Left-Down until I couldn't anymore then switched to Right-Down, rinse repeat only occasionally switching directions to setup long number chains ) and I got a 4096.
Yes, I've covered that point. No it's not just left down on repeat. It's trivially different though. In any case you can choose to believe or not but it's extremely easy compared to Threes! to the point of not being worth playing IMO.
For you maybe, not me - not all the time anyway. Granted when I am bored and feeling lazy, or I have a quick subway ride, I'll spin up 2048, but if I want a challenge and some thinking, I'll spin up Threes. In some sense, 2048 for me now serves as a less twitchy, less exciting Tetris substitute.
Moving the goal posts back on behalf of a game makes the goal more difficult, sure, but it doesn't necessarily mean the difficulty of the actual gameplay increases at the same rate, i.e. it can lag behind the difficulty of the goal, which in my opinion is very much the case for 2048.
The game can take a while, but the version by Ketchapp (on iPhone), which was the first knockoff to hit the app store, gives goals based on what you've solved so far. Right now my display says "Your next goal is to get to the 16384 tile", whereas the Gabriele Cirulli version has the downside of interrupting me every time I hit 2048, which, as you point out, is quite common once you're used to the game mechanic.
Nonetheless, hitting 8192 remains a challenge, and I feel like I've been tantalizingly close to 16384, but have never quite managed it. So as far as I'm concerned 2048 (or, I guess, 16384) remains quite challenging.
In Threes, 768 is the furthest I've gotten. I've found that when things get tight in Threes, you can easily be stymied not just by new tile placement (the only real wildcard in 2048), but also by the "+", "1", and "2"'s that can result in the position being unplayable, thus adding in my mind a greater degree of chance to the game.
To expound a bit more on faet's reply, pick either the top or bottom row as your workspace. I'll assume bottom.
Generally speaking the beginning doesn't really matter all that much so just start building up numbers however you see fit (some people go left right left right multiple times before crunching downwards). But start building and pinning your largest number on either the left or right corner. So, for example, try to make a 32, and pin it in the bottom right. Then start working on a 16 to its left, and an 8 to the 16's left, and a 4 to the 8's left. Generally, I try to make sure the entire workspace row is locked as often as possible by making sure it's always filled. This minimizes the chance that you'll need to unpin the largest number from its corner.
Once you've got your workspace row locked, there are a few things you can do. I haven't decided which I really prefer yet, but I basically just start creating another workspace row above the first workspace row. I'll usually try to focus on creating row #2's largest number on the opposite side of row #1's pinned corner number so that I can start crunching downwards as numbers begin to vertically match.
That's the very general gist of it. There are a few minor special case tactics you can use, but I'll leave that for you. Oh, and as faet said, don't swipe up (if your workspace is at the bottom). It's a recoverable mistake, but can make things much more difficult if you get a 2 stuck below your workspace (but it does kind of add some more spark to the game trying to recover from it). Personally, once you start using this strategy, the biggest thing you need to look out for is to not create a scenario where the game will generate 3 locked rows, because that will force you to swipe up. You'll see what I mean. Good luck.
Generally you want to favor 1 corner. Try to only use down/left. Use right only once your bottom row has 4 so your "Main" block stays in the bottom left.
As far as I can remember 2048 isn't even always beatable by bots due to its random nature, so I suspect your literal 15 beats in a row aren't that literal.
2048 isn't always beatable by the best known bot. I don't know if anyone has proven either way whether 2048 is guaranteed solvable by a perfect bot for all possible random spawns. At the least, no one has found a counterexample like how Tetris has a guaranteed loss with a long enough string of S and Z pieces.
I personally find Threes to involve quite a bit more strategy than 2048. The game is also remarkably polished with legitimately excellent music and a ton of personality. It's been a while since I checked up on the myriad of 2048 clones, so maybe something's changed, but none of them that I tried seemed to have either the same degree of strategy or polish or charm that Threes has.
My introduction to this "genre" was through the first web-based 2048 clone posted here on HN, so if anything I should be biased towards that. But when I picked up Threes I was just flat-out impressed with the cohesiveness of the experience, which went above and beyond 2048 in basically all ways--strategy, art, etc.
At the end of the day, I imagine it comes down to a few simple things. First, Threes is not free. Second, difficulty calibration. Threes is probably just too difficult, which prevented it from hitting critical mass as fast as 2048 did (which is, IMHO, trivial in comparison). Third, sound. Since it's a mobile game a fair share (if not majority) of players will play on mute and hence won't really get to enjoy the music of Threes.
Threes wins in every category. In 2048 once you know the strategy you don't really need to do anything. The rules are too simplistic. In threes everything is wonderful, from the audio, to the animations, to the fun little sounds every block makes on combining, even the little story about each block's personality, and of course a very good set of rules to keep the game predictable(ish) and challenging. It's actually really fun and difficult.
What I'd like to see: Every paid game should have a 3-day free trial. Once you really like it after 3 days, boom purchase. I hate buying games only to realize I wouldn't play it past first sitting. This is where Threes lost, not because its better or paid, but because free is easier to approach.
(I'm comparing threes on a Samsung Captivate Glide and 2048, Evaldo Rossi version, on an ipad mini)
* The interface of threes frustrates me. It takes a relatively long time to start compared to 2048 almost starting instantly and is feels awkward to interact with. Much to convoluted for most settings to me.
* The counting up of score at the end takes too long. I either want to move on to the next game or walk away from it. I don't want to sit there and watch numbers being added.
As to Game play:
* Three's requires more strategy yes, but it is trickier to play in a casual manner, when I have a few free moments here and there. I can pick up a 2048 game, and get somewhere reasonably in a short period of time where threes seems to take more concentration and time (Even beyond the time it takes to get the app going).
The first time I saw threes the performance, theming, and just general styling of the game felt like a knock off of something else. It was bad enough that I didn't think I'd found the original and looked again. The edition of 2048 I came across had a much cleaner interface, smoother game play and works well in time constrained or pickup-play settings while still being interesting enough to be worth playing longer. Threes just doesn't scratch that itch. It's a little too much for casual play but not quite enough for something more serious to me.
They're very different games. With 2048, you make several moves per second. With Threes, you take many seconds per move. I just prefer that style of play more in my casual games.
Threes occupies that awkward middle ground between casual and 'real' games. If I want to play a real game, I'll pick up a 4X or something. If I want a casual game, I play 2048 or sudoku or something similar.
So it's the speed? I've heard that argument before, just curious. People don't seem to argue design or rules or something else like that, just that the tiles move faster.
I would argue the speed of gameplay is a fundamental part of a game's design. The fact that 2048 plays faster and the games are short is better design in a mobile game in my opinion.
I much prefer 2048. The $2 I spent on threes was $2 well spent, but 2048 is the game I pick up when I want to play something. (although the game should have been called 4096).