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Threes! took the mobile world by storm back in 2014 winning the Apple Design Award, and finally for its 10th anniversary it will be coming to Steam so we can all get in on the fun. Releasing on February 6th, it appears it will have Native Linux support too!

It's been through a few upgrades it seems for the Steam version too with controller support and Steam Cloud support too. Might be a good one to chill out with in your coffee breaks at your desk, or on your Steam Deck too (if mobile is not your thing…). A puzzle game that just keeps on going and going until you get tired of it, ready to pick up again another day.

Original trailer:

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The Steam page is light on details, because not much is needed. You slide around numbers to make more numbers. Brilliant in its simplicity.

Much like the more recent hit Wordle, Threes! ended up with a huge amount of games just entirely copying the idea. One that went viral was 2048 (open source) although technically a clone of another similar game (it gets complicated), which The Verge wrote a bit of a round-up about back in 2022. This happens a lot on mobile though, as game-farms see an idea and copy it as quickly as they can. Somewhat reminds me of how Vampire Survivors made a few mechanics popular, and now it has a growing amount of similar games.

Have a look and wishlist Threes! on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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5 comments

pb Jan 18
TFW a 2014 game you never heard about is "classic".
sardine Jan 18
It took some digging to find it again but if anybody is interested the designers themselves assembled a sort of design log of the original app version.
pb Jan 18
Quoting: sardineIt took some digging to find it again but if anybody is interested the designers themselves assembled a sort of design log of the original app version.

Ok, I actually know 2048, and I knew it was based on 1024 but I've never heard of Threes. I guess it's a bit similar to how nobody knows Infiniminer but someone took the original idea, made it better* and stole the limelight.

(*) while I haven't played Threes and I found 2048 pretty boring, it's a no-brainer that powers of two are much better than sums of three


Last edited by pb on 18 January 2024 at 2:50 pm UTC
Mrowl Jan 20
Looks like they just took the mobile version, made it widescreen and not much else.
EWG Jan 23
Hm. Slightly aside here? I think it would be really cool to have a section for Android games. Particularly DRM free, tracker less or minimal, ad free / paid, games. Open source, CC, or libre licenses a plus!
I've got a GPD XP Plus and while it's great, I'm having a hard time finding decent games to play. 😅
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