'2048' Is the Next Mobile Game to Eat Up Your Time

March 24, 2014— -- “Flappy Bird” may be on the rebound, but a new time-suck of a game has made it to smartphones. “2048” is a sliding block puzzle created by Gabriele Cirulli, a programmer based in northern Italy.

The “2048” website says that the game draws inspiration from other popular puzzle games like “1024” and “Threes.” Players moves tiles around the 4-by-4 grid and fuse together two tiles with the same number on them to create a higher-numbered tile. The goal is to make a 2048 tile, but Cirulli, speaking to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, said only 1 percent of all games have been able to get that far.

Like many popular mobile games, “2048” has several copycats for both iOS and Android devices. However, you won’t find an authentic version released from Cirulli himself in those stores. Instead, he maintains that he won’t be making an app version of the game, instead directing people to play the game on its own mobile-friendly website.

However, Cirulli made “2048” open source, allowing for other game developers to put their own creative takes on the game. Among the more memorable ones are the gargantuan “9007199254740992,” the miniscule “4,” and of course, “Flappy 2048.”