Threes is a tiny puzzle game that grows on you.
In Threes, you combine matching numbered tiles by swiping them into one another. It sounds simple…but it’s also difficult and wildly addictive! Threes combine to create sixes, sixes create twelves, twelves create twenty-fours…can you achieve the max score of 1,594,323!?
Threes is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Xbox One!
Development
Threes was developed entirely by Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend. After the success of Threes on iOS, Hidden Variable was approached about helping support the game by adding new features and platforms.
I was initially responsible for porting the game to Android, which mostly involved integration of Android variants for things like leaderboards, achievements, cloud saves, and metrics.
Furthermore, I helped create an Xbox One version of the game. I integrated support for various Xbox features, such as leaderboards, achievements, controllers, profiles, rich presence, and the now-defunct snap mode, which allowed you to play the game while doing something else, like watching TV.
I also developed a system for localizing Threes, which allowed localized data to be entered in a Google Sheets system, exported to CSV, and imported into the client. Localizations could then be previewed in editor or at runtime, and style overrides could be defined for any piece of text to handle placement or spacing issues in certain languages. This system even supported Arabic and other “right-to-left” type languages.
Finally, I helped out with optimization of the game across all platforms, addition of a “Night” mode, and implementation of an ad-supported version of the game in which watching ads got you “tokens,” which you’d then spend to play a round of the game.
It was a lot of fun working on Threes! It was both exciting and satisfying to be involved in the development of a game that experienced such popularity and rave reviews from across the spectrum of gamers.