New App Obsession Only a Swipe Away
Priscilla Ng
Staff Writer
2048, a new app well-known for its highly addictive nature, was released on March 9, 2014; however, the app was not picked up by many students until mid-March.
“I first heard about this game from a friend,” junior Apoorva Handigol said. “Actually, it was because I noticed my friend was paying more attention to swiping her fingers across the phone than me.”
The gameplay is relatively simple: a four by four grid that fills with a 2 or 4 tile for every swipe. The objective of the game is to combine matching numbers until the 2048 tile is achieved.
“I have gotten the 2048 tile a few times and beat the game,” senior Lucia Szeto said. “But it did take me a couple days to get the tile.”
Despite the easy rules, the app has proven to be more attention-grabbing than it appears.
“I think the game is so addicting because unlike games like Flappy Bird, it’s easy to get quite far into the game,” senior Supriya Kazi said. “But at a certain point, like after the 512 tile, it gets quite difficult. So people will keep trying and trying to get to 2048.”
In fact, students have begun to play so often that they have developed their own strategies for how to beat the game.
“Always keep your big numbers all on one side of the board,” senior Matthew Downing said. “But I think the fun part is in figuring out strategies for yourself.”
Some students, however, believe this is just another app that will fade away as time passes.
“I believe all hypes fade,” Handigol said. “2048 is just another one of them.”
Others believe that the app will continue to be popular in the future.
“I think it will eventually fade,” Kazi said. “But there are a lot of people who still haven’t won and I still play it despite having won already.”
Regardless of whether students will continue playing 2048, students have already found other apps that are similar enough, but provide a new challenge.
“After beating 2048, I suggest people play 2584,” senior Roger Lee said. “It’s a spin-off of 2048, except with Fibonacci sequences.”
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