Game: Threes!

Over the past two years, the three-man team of Sirvo LLC has been narrowing in on mobile gaming gold.  Although their only title as a trio was the brilliant Tetris-meets-SpellTower mash-up Puzzlejuice, their Midas Touch spread through the App Store via individual roles on critically-acclaimed games such as Hundreds and Ridiculous Fishing.  After regrouping from their award-winning walkabouts, Sirvo's sophomore offering is another puzzler, and one that sets the bar even higher than it was already stratospherically placed.Threes! is the definition of deceptively simple.  Its one-touch gameplay requires seemingly nothing more from players than the ability to swipe up, down, left, or right.  Doing so will slide all tiles on its 4x4 game board in that same direction, with one of two results: either the tiles will simply move, or they will combine with other tiles.  This is all you have to do to play Threes!, but it's only the beginning of its strategy and depth."Your overarching goal in Threes! is to create larger and larger numbers by combining like-numbered tiles.  While Threes! appears mathematical at first glance, it's strictly a matching game.  When two tiles with the same number cross, they will merge into one new tile featuring their sum.  So, two "3" tiles become one "6" tile, two "12" tiles become one "24" tile, etc.  The only exception to this rule are "1" and "2" tiles, which must combine together to create a "3" tile.  The purpose of these numerical Voltrons is twofold: first, larger numbers are worth more points towards your final score and second, merging tiles clears space on the board.  Since the game ends when the board fills up (and no other matches are available), this is a key component to progress.These core aspects are vaguely similar to Triple Town, but Threes! is only lightly reminiscent of the anti-bear match-3 game.  Combos in Threes! can only be made within rows or columns that are butted up against the walls of the grid; otherwise, the tiles will simply shift to fill open spaces.  This allows freedom to rearrange the grid when needed, but while creating the added demand of filling a row before you can merge tiles.