Show HN: Exponentile – A match 3 game mixed with 2048

[MikeBellika]

Hi HN,

I made this small game in my spare time. It's quite addictive, I spent a lot of hours playing instead of polishing it. My own highscore is 96,792. Source code is at https://github.com/MikeBellika/tile-game. It's made with react, tailwind, and framer motion.

Hope you enjoy!

[boffbowsh]

I was late to sleep because of this, thanks! One suggestion, allowing swipe on touch devices would feel a lot more natural than tapping each square, which was a bit error prone. Either that or make the hitboxes a bit bigger.

[MikeBellika]

Thank you for the feedback! The hitboxes are already quite big on mobile (only a 2px gap). I have implemented swiping though, let me know how it feels :)

[machina_ex_deus]

Love this game. I abused multiple tabs as a way to save the current game, as opening new tab copies the state of the game, and got to a high score of 150,000 (I could keep going, I didn't lose) and made a 4096 tile. Using multiple tabs to save the game when you get a good position makes it possible to play indefinitely. It's even more addictive when you can save the game because then it's not really over at game over.

[novariation]

This is nice ! Lots of these games I honestly don't feel like playing, but for some reason I liked yours. It's simple and the animations are good !

I'm curious by the way, how do you handle the randomness of starting positions and additional bricks to make sure there's always a valid move possible ?

Maybe it's just basic combinatorics (enough possibilities that not having any valid move on the board is impossible ?)

[MikeBellika]

Thank you so much! I think the starting board could theoretically be an instant game over but there always seem to be a lot of possible moves. For new bricks, sometimes there won't be any more valid moves in which case the game will end.

[francisco_133]

Hi, I made a version for iOS in my free time. I'm not entirely sure if it replicates the game dynamics 100%, but it was quite fun to make.

https://jmp.sh/s/K8X7RqE9rVjxxWTJoFYo

Also, I wanted to ask if you wouldn't mind me launching the application to the store?

[MikeBellika]

This looks very nice, I like the tutorial! What did you use to make it?

I'm actually working on an app myself, waiting on approval from apple. If you don't mind I would prefer to launch it myself.

[NKosmatos]

58672 on the first try, nice game and a bit addictive :-) Would be nice if swapping of the tiles was done with sliding instead of clicking. I would definitely play this, even with ads on the sides/top/bottom.

[MikeBellika]

Nice score! I like how clean the game is now, so I don't think I'll implement ads. I have added swiping though, hope it feels a bit better now :-)

[CarlJW]

Very addicting game. I love it.

One of the things that made 2048 great was that you could spam the keyboard to play it more quickly.

This game could benefit similarly with additon of keyboard controls via numpad. So you would enter coords and then the position to move it to. I.e. press 5,5 then 5,6. Alternatively enter coords then press an arrow key.

Could also just use arrow keys and space bar to move a cursor, but I think numpad would be faster.

Currently quite time consuming to play having to click and click, and the animation speed could be faster.

Gonna lose some sleep playing this haha.

[mattmar96]

This is fantastic! You've definitely got a knack for making games like this. I've been making some similar games with a similar tech stack, but with react-spring. Most recently I created clones of all the NYT Games puzzles.

Check out my github https://github.com/matttt. I also made a puzzle called https://slidecross.io

I may contribute to your project if I see something that could be improved!

[MikeBellika]

Thank you! Slidecross is also quite fun and satisfying.

[gizajob]

Thanks so much for making this game - I’ve had hours of addictive fun playing it. So compelling!

[MikeBellika]

Thats very kind, thank you!

[mdaniel]

I think I am not following some nuance; given:

  4 4 2 16
  8 8 4 2

pulling that 4 up into its friends yields

  ? ? 8 16
  8 8 2 2

which after seeing that behavior across several combinations (2 2 2 -> 4) I'm now guessing the actual rules are "The more tiles in the match, the higher the resulting tile will be, PROVIDED IT IS A POWER OF 2". So, one must join at least 3, but only the power-of-2 pairs count, the other tile just evaporates

[MikeBellika]

I’m not a 100% sure i follow but i’ll try to explain. The tiles can only be powers of two. Matching 3 tiles will make the matching tile the next power of two. So 2-2-2 will make 4, 4-4-4 will make 8, 8-8-8 will make 16, etc. If you match more tiles, it will go to higher powers of two. 2-2-2-2 will make 8, 2-2-2-2-2 will make 16. Only one tile per match will be turned into the higher tile. When swapping a tile this will be the swapped tile. When part of a combo, it will be the tile with most matches. If multiple tiles have the same amount of matches it will be the left/top most tile. The other tiles do indeed “evaporate”. I hope this makes some sense, wrote it from my phone.

[stoneman24]

Well done, I was late to sleep and late to work. Entirely my fault for trying to improve my score. Very enjoyable game and thanks for making source available for study.

[drcongo]

I like this a lot. Couple of bits of feedback - 1. The animations could be a little quicker, 2. I feel like combos should be rewarded, 3. Most match three games will allow a 2x2 square (though it's possible that that could have different implications in this one that I haven't thought through). The game mechanic is great though, nice work!

[drcongo]

Edit: A disappointing 38,608 on my first go. Just tried it on mobile and like someone else mentioned, ability to slide the tiles would be great too.

[noman-land]

This is an evil game that will trap you and prevent you from working or eating.

[quechimba]

This game is really fun. My highscore is 60328 after a few days :)

[cionut]

cool game! - FYI my first instinct was to swipe the tiles (but in 2 seconds you figure out the other mechanic also) - currently at 4312, but I assume I can continue at any time? (until no more moves) - have you thought about bringing this game to mobile? (very familiar with match 3 and 2048 - and there are 2 games that I found in the AppStore, but this one feels different) - or maybe commercialising via web/HTML5 gaming portals?

[MikeBellika]

Thank you :)

Yeah you can keep playing. Game state is saved in a cookie, so you can even close the page and come back.

I have optimised the game for mobile and it's possible to add it to the home screen since it's a PWA. I have considered making an app but haven't really tried that before.

I have no experience with web gaming portals but I think would be open to it.

[mutant]

Pixel 7 here, game consistently locked up in chrome for me, usually around the score of 20k. Couldn't speed play, very laggy.

10/10 will play again.

[MikeBellika]

Weird. I dont have an android to test with and I dont get the lag on iOS even in very long games.

I have removed some unused debug functionality, that might have caused it. Hope it helps.

[mdaniel]

Congratulations on your game, and thanks for making the source available!

Please do consider adding a license file to indicate what rights you grant to others

[MikeBellika]

Thank you! I will add a license to the repo when i get back to my pc tomorrow. I think ill go with MIT.

[dhc02]

This is the most addictingly fun thing I've played since the first time I tried Threes. Truly you've got something good here.

[coreyhn]

This was a lot of fun to play, thanks for sharing!

[microflash]

Lovely game. Would be great if the UI is vertically centred or aligned to bottom. Makes it easier to play on tall devices.

[jasonjmcghee]

Would you mind setting `overscroll-behavior: none`? I keep accidentally refreshing the game when I try to make a move.

[MikeBellika]

Done, thank you!

[aappleby]

30,020 first try. Game seems less likely to get permastuck that it looks at first.

[dr_kiszonka]

I am enjoying the game. I am curious why there are no sound effects.