I used to never get hung up on games. Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, whatever. But I’ve always been a tabletop game junkie. Lately, I’ve discovered some of my favorite tabletop games on Game Center for iProducts. Carcassonne was a fun one to find, because of all the tiny pieces. Likewise, finding Sudoku games was a treasure.
Last night, my friend the Llama introduced us to a ridiculously addictive numbers game. It’s called Threes.
It starts easy enough. Just swipe the numbers to the edge, where they will be forced to connect. The above image is from the tutorial, which walks you through the controls and concepts.
Ones and twos have to be added together to make a 3. Any product of 3 has to be added to the same number to make a higher number. The numbers can’t be pushed through the edges, so if you swipe left here, the 1 and 2 in the second row get forced together to make a 3. You can’t combine a 1 and a 1, or a 2 and a 2. But you must combine 3s with 3s and the resulting 6 with another 6. It gets quite complicated quickly. Thankfully, you can look at the color of the next incoming tile in the tiny tab at the top. It won’t tell you the number, but you will know if it’s a 1 (blue), a 2 (red), or a product of 3 (white). Each time you swipe, the next tile comes in to one of the newly opened spaces.
Your game is over when all the slots fill up and you can’t make another move. It feels a tiny bit like Tetris, but not so extreme. Your score is exponential. A three will be only worth three points, but the higher your number gets, the more points-per-number you receive.
All that for only 2 bucks in the app store. Enjoy!