Merge (2014)

I stumbled across 2048 while browsing r/programming. It was a pretty simple game that was getting traction, and I thought it would fun to make a similar game on the iPhone.

I decided it would be a good time to experiment with the new iOS 7 sliding animations and CAShapeLayer path animations. Instead of numbers, I was going to make the squares be polygons that mutated into other polygons.

Halfway through development I got that sinking feeling that the game I was making sucked. I arcadified it and gave it a real-time tetris-like goal in which you need to keep the board from filling up. I got impatient and started throwing spaghetti code everywhere.

I felt that the game was too easy/boring with just polygons. I put in ice blocks (that couldn’t merge) and bombs (to help you clear ice blocks). This also let me experiment with CAEmitterLayer stuff for bomb smoke.

Merge is open source. Github here.