Threes! Thanks.

Just wanted to say, I bought and downloaded Threes! after hearing Brad and Jeff talking about it on this weeks podcast and came here to say... Damn them. Usually I have a very low threshold for mobile platform games, they just don't have enough going on in them to keep my attention, but the only thing stopping me constantly playing this game is the terrible battery life on my old iPhone 4s and when I'm not playing it I'm imagining sliding matching cars on the motorway together to combine them, it's been a long time since a game has got so firmly in my sub-conscious as that.

Anyone else picked it up?

I grabbed it right after listening to the podcast. Very, very addictive. And I know exactly what you mean by matching cars/people/other objects, not to mention seeing sliding tiles any time I close my eyes.

What's your high score? I can't seem to get past 8,000.

I read a Kotaku article on how you basically have to game where the new numbers appear to not completely fuck yourself, and it made me realize that it probably requires an amount of dedication I am no longer willing to give the game. Also the game DESTROYS the battery on my iPhone 4S, despite seeming like it would be really light on both the processor and graphics and memory side of things. So even if I wanted to play it away from home more often, I would have to keep my phone plugged in pretty regularly like some kind of weirdo.

I do like Threes though. It's simple, but really engaging. I consistently fail around 3300-3500, where I have a single 192 on the board, and cannot get any of my 96s or 48s to match up to save my fucking life. I have one really good run where I got up to 9936, and I feel alright about that. Does anyone else always think it feels like complete bullshit whenever your board is finally locked up? I always feel like I'm getting robbed by the game, even though it's obviously my fault that I've been slowly locking up my board. The game infuriates me at times because whenever I feel like I have a good run going, it somehow gets fucked and I lose at the same old 3300-3500.

I should probably just exile myself away to Retard Island. Based on my performance at Threes, it is where I belong.

I picked it up on a whim a little over a week ago when bombcrew and friends were buzzing about it and posting their highscores on twitter. I think its just fantastic. Unfortunately my highscore is only 6,700. I've gotten to the point where most of my games are about 3,000 or so, but I've seemed to plateau. My basic strategy is to combine as many 1's and 2's as possible, moving the board to accommodate those combos. The challenge is also getting your big combos set up because that's where most of your score comes from. The lower numbers don't really contribute shit to your score in comparison. I need some deeper Threes! strategy.

P.S. To you guys talking about it eating your battery, there is a conserve battery mode. I believe it makes the game not run in 60 fps. You duders were probably already aware of it, but I thought I would throw that out there.

@trilogy said:

If you want to start counting cards like Rain Man, you can somewhat predict what your next cards will be. Starting with the first turn, every set of 12 cards that get dealt to the player will be 4 ones, 4 twos, and 4 threes. There's a weird exception where once you have higher numbers on the board, it will sometimes add a 13th card to the stack, like a 6 or a 12.

That and other terrifying tips on strategy and how the game works I learned from this article:

http://kotaku.com/tips-for-playing-threes-the-new-mobile-game-everyones-1522388747

Aside from the stupid tabloid headline ("The new mobile game everyone's talking about!" aka "Read this article or else you won't be cool!" *VOMIT*), that article is pretty legit.