2048 is one of the most fascinating puzzle games that has gone viral, taking the world completely by storm. Inspired by Threes, its gameplay is both easy to grasp and yet difficult to master, despite the many 2048 strategies out there that guarantee you’ll be able to win.

However, as massive fans of tabletop games, one question kept tugging at the back of our minds – what if the 2048 game is transformed into a real-life board game? How will that work? Well, we did a whole lot of thinking for you so let us dive into all the possibilities!

Well, there are quite a lot of challenges that 2048 faces in this hypothetical conversion process. For instance, the game relies a lot of random tile generation which is Random Number Generator (RNG)-powered. Obviously, this would not work in a tabletop setting where the RNG algorithms cannot exist. However, there are mechanics that can be used to simulate RNG in real life, including drawing cards, rolling a dice, or using a spinning wheel like that of The Game of Life. It’s a bit troublesome to pull off without digital help, but it’s definitely doable.

Not to mention, the main gameplay in 2048 involves sliding tiles and merging them. On a screen, this is all done very smoothly with the help of a mouse or your fingertip. In the board game version, however, players will likely have to move the physical tiles and merge them manually. The physical game can have a sliding board mechanism, much like in those sliding puzzles, that makes this a lot easier, though the game would technically not be considered a “board game” then.

We’ll also need to take a look at the scoring system since in the digital version, everything is automatically tracked. With a physical board game version, players will instead have to keep track of scores manually, whether by using a scoreboard or score sheets.

Now, if we combine all of the possibilities above, we can generally have an idea of what a physical board game version of 2048 will look like. It can, for example, be a tile-based board game that is similar to Scrabble where players draw tiles from a bag (to simulate randomized tiles) and place them on the board. Merging a tile will replace the lower-value tile with a higher-value one. Randomized tiles can also be drawn from the bag, and their position on the board can be determined by a dice. Scoring can be done based on number of successful merges as well as the value of the merges. Naturally, higher value merges will grant an exponentially higher score.

The 2048 board game can be played in solo or multiplayer modes. In multiplayer, two players compete against each other to be the first to get the 2048 tiles. They share the same tile bag, and whoever has the highest score when the tiles are exhausted or perhaps when no more moves are possible is the winner.

Now, as fun as it is to embark on this thought experiment, there is always this million-dollar question: Is this 2048 board game something that fans actually want?

To be honest, despite being avid fans of 2048, we are truly unsure. On the one hand, the digital 2048 game is definitely a whole lot more convenient to play, especially if you’re playing on your phone, since most of the time, the game is during brief free moments in life, like while traveling on the subway. On the other hand, considering how many advocates we have for cutting down screen time, this board game version can definitely help in that respect.

Regardless, bringing 2048 into the physical world is a truly creative challenge for whoever decides to undertake it. There are many kinks to work out, for sure, but it’ll be an exciting project to embark on. Would YOU play a real-life version of 2048?