Flappy 2048 Review: Wherein I Clear 2 Million

“Some maniac combined Flappy Bird and 2048!” writes an Imgur user. That about sums up Flappy 2048 (thank you @ShawnElliott, former editorial compadre, for bringing it to my attention): a game — you can play it here in a browser — that weds the inanity of Flappy Bird to the puzzling mathematical madness of 2048.

Flappy Bird — this link is to someone else’s web-based copy — you probably know. But in the event you don’t, it’s an endless side-scroller where you tap your screen (or click a mouse) to make a bird flap its wings and arc through narrow gaps between Super Mario Bros.-like pipes. The pipes are positioned close together, your flaps feel more like lurches, each gap is very small and they change height as you go, making sustained flight virtually impossible. There’s no saving, the achievements are competition-medal minimum (and they max out low), and so the impetus to play much past “gold” harks back to old-school arcade-dom, King of Kong style.

2048, by contrast, is a math-based slide-tile game currently tearing up the freemium charts that’s been relatively well-received. I first heard about it when someone claimed they’d landed a score of 8,192. Having fiddled with it myself, I now realize just how incredible a feat that is.

Flappy 2048 marries the two by replacing Flappy Bird‘s gaps with 2048‘s matching numbers. Click here to see that Imgur poster’s animated GIF of the game in action:

Like Flappy Bird, you click the mouse to flap the bird-cube’s wings and aim for a number match to trigger 2048‘s math-doubling, then repeat, ad nauseam. I’ve been playing the web version this afternoon and managed to clear 2,097,152, which sounds really impressive, but since I suck at Flappy Bird, is really just another way of saying it’s a whole lot easier than Flappy Bird. All you have to do is get close to the intended number block and it all but pulls you through (that, and it’s pretty forgiving about its thresholds). This is what those of you who can’t stand Flappy Bird should consider playing. That, or check out 2048 itself.

Though: “Things get really weird after you reach the 2048 block,” writes the Imgur poster. I can vouch that yes, they do. Yes, they definitely do.