Bring in the (mobile) clones

Indie game development over the last few years has arguably sparked a new golden age of creativity and a diversity, especially in mobile. But for every game like 80 days or Framed, we have other games that trigger enormous controversy. My go-to examples for last year are Threes and 2048. This came back to me recently when a group of game-industry veterans were asked to judge the best games of 2014 for the International Mobile Game Awards.

Slide and count

In the unlikely case anyone reading this doesn’t know the original game, Threes introduced the match-2 model of gameplay. You slide numbered tiles to add them together. First you add 1 and 2 to make 3, then match two 3s to make a 6. Great game. But then, at least according to the legend, 2048 was created in just a few weeks after it was launched, but because it was free (and Threes was paid), that game became a breakout success. Unsurprisingly, the Threes developer got upset that they had been cloned.