Hacker News Reader

Comment by renekooi | Hacker News Reader

> which really only took the "two tiles with the same numbers merge when they collide" element from Threes

Which is the only element Threes has!

It also has 1s and 2s merging with each other but not themselves.

The bottom line is that Threes is a much better game than any of the clones I've played. There's a subtlety and polish to the gameplay that is missing from the others. It's obvious they spent a lot of time perfecting everything from the tile distribution to where they spawn and how they merge.

It's very polished ... but. The start animation? Needs to die. Showing me a game which then turns out to be finished when I try and swipe? Bad UX. Score totalling animation? Cute the first couple of times, very annoying thereafter. Swiping and signing? Again, cute for a couple of times rapidly turning into a rancid waste of time when you want to play again (yes, I know you can set this to autosign now but ...)

It's just not smooth enough from start -> play -> restart -> restart to be a good casual gaming experience. It's start -> thud -> thud -> play -> thud -> thud -> restart -> right, back to 2048 then.

So the start screen, menu, and all metagame aspects are more important than gameplay to you? Okay, if that's what you value.

When they take up a substantial fraction of the time playing a casual game? Yes, they become important. If I can't pick it up and quickly play N games whilst I'm on the train of a morning, I'm not interested, sorry. If I wanted long load times and faff between games, I have a whole Steam library full of that.

So you have to tap twice in between games instead of once. If this is anything approaching a significant fraction of your time playing Threes, then you are terrible at it. It takes a good 10-20 minutes to get up to a 768 or 1536.

Oh and "< back" from Options leading to the game scrolling down from the top? Very annoying. It has a left arrow. The iOS convention is that going back up the stack means moving left. But no, they've gone for a left arrow with scrolling up and down. Buffoonery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com