2048 Pinnacle

2048 Pinnacle

Download on App Store

Why the name Pinnacle?

I was having Piña colada and playing 2048 when the sliver of this idea struck me. When it was time for christening this app, i recalled that moment and decided to dedicate it to the Piña colada. But mind you, if it were to be named after my favourite drink it would have been 2048 Beer.

What is this all about?

2048 is no doubt an awesome game, but a little on the slower side. Strategies have evolved around this game and now I find that reaching at least 1024 is just a matter of time. So I began to think what else could be done and I came up with two new twists which made the game more interesting.

 Maps

• I have introduced two useless hindering tiles, those that stand still and don’t move and those that move but do nothing much. Putting these tiles in different configurations gave rise to different maps. To conquer each map, you have to come up with a different strategy and it is not always possible to get 2048. In the map named Claustrophobia, I could achieve only 64.

Next Tile

• This is the more interesting part. When the board is littered, you have very less place to manoeuvre. Knowing the next tile can sometime lead you from being at the brink of GameOver to getting back in the game. The next tile also lets you plan a few moves ahead, like Chess and Tetris. 

Map which resembles the reel of an old video tape reel. Remember the good old days!

Map which resembles carom board with a hole at each corner.

This is an interesting map for a very tiny game. Use the next tile judiciously!

The all time favourite classic map. Can you score more because now you know whats coming next?

It took me around a month to implement these two enhancements and a few more weeks to make the app production ready fully armed with the following features:

• Ultra refined gameplay. You will feel the tiles obey your mind rather that your fingers. I have spent hours tweaking to achieve near perfection. 
• Simple and neat UI.
• Game Center with leaderboards to compete for high score and highest tile in all maps.
• Night mode to avoid straining your eyes while playing at night.
• Fully compatible with iOS 6.

choose a map or enable night mode from the Menu

Leaderboards!

Finally, it was time to get the icon. I asked Saloni Sinha, my colleague in Pramati Technologies, to design a nice icon real fast. She gave me two options, a nice icon or a fast icon. I repeated that I wanted a nice icon real fast but she remained stubborn, that the choices are mutually exclusive. I gave in and choose to have a nice icon. She took her time but the job was done well. Thanks Saloni for the wonderful icon :-).

Presently, the app is available only for iOS. Android users, stay tuned, I started learning Android development. It should take a couple of years ;).

2048 Blaze

Why yet another 2048?

I played the most popular 2048 on App Store and the iPhone game by Gabriele Cirulli, they share two common traits I didn't like - rough gameplay and minimal leader boards. I was sure I could do better. 

Most of you must have read and hopefully played my other 2048 based game, 2048 Pinnacle, it was actually supposed to go after Blaze but because of numerous problems, the release of Blaze was delayed by a couple of months.

It all started as a fun activity, I wanted to see if I can improve the gameplay and also tweak the algorithm to give higher tiles. 

To my surprise, with almost no effort, I could achieve a far smoother gameplay. But giving random tiles higher than 4 was not very interesting. So I reverted to the classic algorithm but retained my superb user interaction.  

I sat for a day and carefully tweaked the swipe algorithm and finally it was smooth as butter. The difference was drastic. After playing my game for a few hours, i just could not tolerate the existing 2048s. It was like using a Mac and then trying to go back to windows.

Next was the leaderboards. With the existing apps, I could compete only on score. How about highest tile? Not everyone can get a 4096 and far few can go much beyond that. I would certainly love to flaunt that I got an 8192 or even 16384.

I added highest tile into the leaderboards but something was missing. Going from 2048 to 4096 is a quantum leap and I could see a bell curve with most players achieving 1024 and 2048. I began thinking if there is any other interesting stat to compete. Should I design a game with shorter leaps? But that would be come a whole different game.

And then it hit me - the sands of time! The improved gameplay provides a perfect platform to introduce time. Fastest 256, Fastest 512, Fastest 1024, Fastest 2048 crept into the leaderboards.

With my app showing signs of being production ready and a potential to compete with its peers, I started putting more hours into it. With the main features finalised, I started making it App Store ready. I was testing the app just before going to sleep and the bright background was straining my eyes so I added in a night mode dimming all the colors. You can use this mode to save battery as well. 

I was ready to push the app into the App Store but something else was missing. I had no way of knowing if I had beaten my previous time record of getting a tile and it was irritating to tap on stats to find out. So I made a switchable Heads-Up display which flashes interesting events :-)

It says 'You achieved Hasty 32 earlier but now late by 9s'

It says 'You are late by 0.8s to beat your personal record and 9.28s late to get the achievement'

I spent a week on minor tweaks, intense testing and refining the UI, adding sounds, integrating Facebook, Twitter, iAds and admob. The ads are displayed at the perfect place. iAds in fact add beauty to the app.

Share screen shot on FB twitter, see more games by me, toggle sound :-)

Happy with my handicraft, I asked Vamshi for an icon and he gave me one in a couple of minutes. Thanks Vamshi for giving the cool icon at blazing speed! :-)

With everything in proper place, I pushed the app to the App Appstore. These days Apple has been averaging 8-12 days for an App Review so instead of biting my fingers waiting for it, I have decided to continue making more games. Stay tuned!