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Yes, you can actually beat 'Threes!'
Just when you thought the deceptively complex puzzler Threes! wasn't beatable, the internet comes along and proves you wrong. Three and a third years later (confirmed by the development team) the folks behind the ThreesPorn Twitter account have captured something special in the GIFs embedded below. It's quite a bit more elaborate as the victory screen for Solitaire on Windows, too. If you're going to strive to beat it yourself now that you know it's possible, don't scroll down. But if you want to know what score you should strive to top here's your target: 1,594,458.
Play 'Threes' for free in your browser right now
Threes, the adorable number-squishing, tile-sliding puzzle game, is available to play for free (and without ads) in browsers via desktop and mobile devices. The game is otherwise free (with ads) on Android and iOS, or you can spend $2 for a version without commercial breaks. Designer Asher Vollmer and illustrator Greg Wohlwend announced the browser edition during a Reddit AMA on Thursday.
The original number-pushing puzzle game, 'Threes,' goes free
Threes is a deceptively simple puzzle game. You slide numbered tiles across a 16-slot board, combining twin numbers to rack up the highest score possible. It seems like something timeless, like it should have been next to the crossword puzzle in The New York Times back when your grandpa was a kid (if newspapers supported touchscreens, that is). In reality, it took Threes creator Asher Vollmer and artist Greg Wohlwend over a year of careful planning to create the perfect number-squishing puzzle game. When they released Threes, Vollmer and Wohlwend charged $1.99 on the iOS App Store. Just 21 days later, clones of Threes began popping up in mobile stores, most of them for the low, low price of free. You've probably heard of 2048, the Threes clone that refuses to disappear. Now, Threes is closing the gap between itself and those clones, and opening itself up to even more players by launching -- you guessed it -- for free.
The clone that won't disappear: 'Threes' vs. '2048' on Google Play
Google removed the quirky puzzle game Threes from the Play store on Tuesday. Its removal was unceremonious and sudden, but that's not exactly why Threes creator Asher Vollmer found the situation frustrating. That came down to two reasons: A robot informed Vollmer that his game was removed from Google Play in a cold, automated message. Threes was removed from Google Play because it used "2048" as a keyword -- and 2048 is a blatant, known clone of Threes. Google -- probably a human there, not a robot -- reinstated Threes after just a few hours offline and following a stream of articles and Twitter activity around its removal. Of course, 2048 remained live on Google Play the entire time, alongside a bunch of other Threes clones. This string of events highlights one of the biggest differences between Google and Apple, and how they approach their app stores. "Apple's policies are preventative and Google's policies are retroactive," Vollmer says. "You can probably figure out which one I prefer."
Puzzlejuice plans a Steam release, dev goes to work for thatgamecompany
Puzzlejuice is one of my favorite recent apps on the App Store, and it's about to get a lot more ... well, favorite-er. The app is getting a big update this Thursday taking it to version 1.5, and celebrating the fact that the game has been included in the PAX 10 at this weekend's big video game convention in Seattle. The new version will have a tougher difficulty level, a new powerup, and compatibility with Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch as well as the original English. And because of the update itself, the game will be on sale for just 99 cents -- a bargain at twice the price. The title is also making its way to Steam, and developer Asher Vollmer says that he's working on a keyboard only version of the game (so maybe the letters will be typed out instead of dragging a finger across the screen) that we'll get to see at PAX. And Vollmer also shares the good news that he's been hired as a game designer at thatgamecompany, the excellent studio known for great games like Flow and Journey. So congrats to Vollmer on all of his success -- that Steam version should be just around the corner and we can't wait to see what he's up to next.
