User Guide
Overview
Blindfold Tile Puzzle is a fully accessible sliding tile puzzle game for both sighted and visually impaired people, designed for rapid audio play.
There are several puzzles in this game, including 2048, Game of Threes and Alphabet. This guide describes the first puzzle, 2048.
The other puzzles are described in the Games Guide.
The objective of the 2048 game is to slide numbered tiles on a grid to combine them and create a tile with the number 2048.
The game has been described by the Wall Street Journal as “almost like Candy Crush for math geeks”.
This game is played on a 4 by 4 grid, with numbered tiles that slide smoothly when you moves them a 2 finger swipe.
Every turn, a new tile will randomly appear in an empty spot on the board with a value of either 2 or 4.
Tiles slide as far as possible in the chosen direction until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid.
If two tiles of the same number collide while moving, they will merge into a tile with the total value of the two tiles that collided.
For example, if a 2 collides with a 2, it turns into a 4. If a 16 collides with a 16, it turns into 32.
The resulting tile cannot merge with another tile again in the same move.
Each time a tile is merged, your score is increased by the new tile. If an 8 collides with another 8, you earn 16 points.
The game is won when a tile with a value of 2,048 appears on the board, hence the name of the game.
You control this game using iPhone gestures. To return to the main menu, swipe up with three fingers.
To naviagate within the 4×4 grid, flick up, down, left and right.
If you flick up or down, you will hear the numbers in the row you are on, in a woman’s voice.
If you flick left or right, you will hear the numbers in the column you are on, in a man’s voice.
If you tap, you will hear first the numbers in the column you are on, then the numbers in the row you are on.
To slide the numbers to the left, swipe left with 2 fingers.
To slide right, swipe right with 2 fingers.
To slide up or down, swipe up or down with 2 fingers.
If you need to know if you can make a move or how many free spots there are, shake the phone.
To undo your move, swipe left with 3 fingers, or press 3 fingers for about a second.
If you have lost the game, you can still undo your last few moves to try something else.
Each time two numbers collide, you will hear the row and column where numbers collided and the new value of that tile.
Understanding the Puzzle Layout
Consider the puzzle with the numbers 1,2,3,4 in the first row, 5,6,7,8 in the second row, 9,10,11,12 in the third row and 13,14,15,16 in the fourth row.
These would not be real numbers for the game 2048, but it will help explain the gestures.
When the game first starts, your cursor is at the upper left corner, which is column 1, row 1.
If you tap the screen, you will hear the phrase “Column 1” and the numbers 1,5,9,13; then you will hear the phrase “Row 1” and the numbers 1,2,3,4.
If you swipe left, the cursor is at Column 2, Row 1. You will hear “Column 2”, and the numbers 2,6,10,14.
If you swipe right, the cursor is back at column 1, row 1, and you will hear “Column 1” again, and the numbers 1,5,9,13.
If you now swipe down, the cursor is at Column 1, Row 2. You will hear “Row 2”, and the numbers 5,6,7,8.
If you swipe right, the cursor is at Column 2, Row 2. You will hear “Column 2”, and the numbers 2,6,10,14.
If you swipe right again, the cursor is at Column 3, Row 2. You will hear “Column 3”, and the numbers 3,7,11,15.
When you swipe left or right, you hear the column that your cursor just moved to.
When you swip up or down, you hear the row that your cursor just moved to.
When you tap the screen, you hear both the column and the row where your cursor is.
Tutorial
The general idea of this game is that you want to combine identical tiles by shifting all of the tiles left, right, up or down. It is played on a 4 by 4 grid.
Consider the following layout:
empty empty 2 4
empty empty 4 8
empty 2 16 32
empty 2 2 16
When you hit slide up, here’s what happens in for each column.
The first column is all empty, so it remains empty.
The second column moves both number 2’s up into the empty spaces, and the combine into a 4. That column now reads 4 empty empty empty.
The third and fourth columns remains unchanged, since there were no empty spaces.
The grid now looks like:
empty 4 2 4
empty empty 4 8
empty empty 16 32
empty empty 2 16
Numbers are only combined when they are identical and they are replaced by the sum of the two numbers.
Whenever that happens, no matter how many times it happens, either a 2 or a 4 is randomly dropped into an empty spot.
After the random 2 or 4 is dropped into one of the empty spaces (for this tutorial, I assumed it was a 2 and dropped it into row 1 column 4), the grid now looks like:
2 4 2 4
empty empty 4 8
empty empty 16 32
2 empty 2 16
Now I have several choices for combining more things. If I move all rows up, the 2 in the first row and the 2 in the fourth row will combine.
Likewise, if I move all rows down, they will combine the same way.
Or I can move all columns left, and the 2 in the row 4 column 1 will combine with row 4 column 3, yielding:
2 4 2 4
4 8 empty empty
16 32 empty empty
4 16 empty empty
After the random 2 or 4 is dropped into one of the empty spaces (for this tutorial, I assumed it was a 4 and dropped it into row 4 column 4), it looks like:
2 4 2 4
4 8 empty empty
16 32 empty empty
4 16 empty 4
Games
2048 Unlimited
This is the same as the 2048 game, but the game does not end when you reach 2048. Instead, you keep playing to get the highest possible score.
Game of Threes
This game is played on a 4 by 4 grid, with numbered tiles that slide smoothly when you moves them a 2 finger swipe.
Every turn, a new tile will randomly appear in an empty spot on the board with a value of either 1 or 2.
Tiles slide as far as possible in the chosen direction until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid.
If two tiles add up to a multiple of three collide while moving, they will merge into a tile with the total value of the two tiles that collided.
For example, if a 1 collides with a 2, it turns into a 3. If a 3 collides with a 6, it turns into 9.
The resulting tile cannot merge with another tile again in the same move.
A Game of Threes typically lasts several minutes and ends when no moves remain on the grid (usually when gridlocked with a single high number tile and many low number tiles).
Your score is increased by the value of the tiles merged.
The object of the game is to earn the highest possible score.
Alphabet
This game is played on a 4 by 4 grid, with letter tiles that slide smoothly when you moves them a 2 finger swipe.
Every turn, a new tile will randomly appear in an empty spot on the board with the letter “A”.
Tiles slide as far as possible in the chosen direction until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid.
If two tiles of the same letter collide while moving, they will merge into a tile with the next letter of the alphabet.
For example, if the letter “A” collides with another letter “A”, it turns into the letter “B”.
If the letter “D” collides with another “D”, it turns into the letter “E”.
The resulting tile cannot merge with another tile again in the same move.
Alphabet is much harder than 2048 and Game of Threes.
Your score is increased by the value of the tiles merged, where the letter “A” is worth one point.
The object of the game is to earn the highest possible score.