It’s been over 10 years since the surprisingly simple, yet frustratingly difficult puzzle game 2048 showed up, and the internet has been filled with clones and spin-offs ever since. The game has simple and addictive mechanics, so it’s not really a surprise, but Hero 2048 takes that mechanic, mixes it with tower defense, and adds a dash of fantasy and pixelation. The end result mostly works, but ONW Studio’s implementation has some flaws and rough edges.
How do you play Hero 2048
The game starts you off with two randomly picked level 1 units (unit classes are melee, magic, and ranged), which you can move around the 4×4+1 grid in any of the four cardinal directions. Moving any two units of the same level and class into each other will combine them into a single unit of a higher level and the same class. For example, two level-1 archers combine to create a single level-2 crossbowman. Don’t worry too much about the names since they’re entirely cosmetic.
It’s a cool concept, but to make it work, you need to spawn some new units, which you can do by either generating one of a random class for 15 gold or you can pick the class of your new unit for four gems. Gold is earned by defeating the mobs, and you get one gem for every five mobs you kill. Sometimes you get more, most likely for clearing a level, but the game doesn’t always make it clear why they’re earned. In addition to spawning new units, you can use your gold to upgrade the base stats of your different classes.
Hero 2048 offers fun, satisfying mechanics
There’s a bit more depth here, but those are the basics. Honestly, just trying to get your units leveled up is kind of fun. There’s a bit of strategy involved in when you spawn a new unit and how you arrange your existing units before you do. Do you spam random units hoping for the combo you want, or do you spend a few gems to make it happen?
Managing the timing of the movements can be satisfying as well. Each unit has a special attack unique to its class and level that they execute at fixed intervals. If there’s no enemy in range, that attack gets queued up, so it’s possible to unleash a wave of powerful attacks all at once just by tactically moving your peeps.
Sometimes, Hero 2048 feels woefully half-baked
Although the micro mechanics of movement and upgrading your units is fun, there’s no obvious way to know whether you’re “winning” or “losing.” Ostensibly, this is a tower defense game built on top of a 2048 mechanic, but even though there’s a house in one corner of the screen, there’s no tower, even though the game’s extremely limited narrative mentions one. This could be forgiven as a translation error (the game is made for a Korean audience first), but there’s no measure of your “tower’s” health — no bar, no meter, no gauge, no numbers. It took me a while to figure out, but the game ends when there are over 100 mobs on-screen at the same time. Still, there’s no in-game indication of bad guy numbers; one second you’re playing, the next you’ve lost.
This is made even more confusing by the fact that the mobs never really reach the tower. Instead of blocking the baddies from breaching your defenses, the enemies march around the 2048 grid in an endless loop until they are killed by your units or the game ends.
This sense of playing a half-cooked game bleeds over into the UI as well. Even though Hero 2048 is available for Android and Steam, it’s very clearly not meant to be played on your phone. The UI font is so small it’s illegible on anything smaller than a tablet. It’s also possible to see UI elements overlapping one another, to the point you have to close your unit select menu in order to see all of your magic menu. This is true whether I played it on my 6.3” Pixel 9 or 11” Galaxy A9+.
Hero 2048’s graphics are a mixed bag
One of the biggest mysteries for me is the lack of proper art for the game’s bosses. Every 10th level, there’s a harder-to-kill boss, and it looks and moves like a larger enemy sprite, but it’s all black. It almost looks like a placeholder. The exception is the final boss at level 60 that has a dash of red. The reason this is disappointing is because the game features very charming pixel art otherwise, so it’s kind of a bummer that the designers didn’t put any effort into the bosses.
It could be that they just ran out of gas, because the pixel art of the other units and mobs is fun and relatively varied. This isn’t the greatest pixel art in the world, but it’s fun to see the designs of the different units as you upgrade them, as well as the mobs from varying levels. I particularly like the level 3 ranged unit that has sunglasses. It’s fun, and I like the way it juxtaposes with the fantasy aesthetic.
Having said how much I like the designs, the game needs some kind of indication on your units to show their level and class. This is especially true if you play on your phone since you can’t really distinguish the finer details on a small screen, making it difficult to tell the difference between units, and thus difficult to properly combine them.
In the same vein, there’s too much on the screen. Every time a unit uses a special attack, it has a speech bubble announcing the attack like they’re an anime protagonist. You can turn this off in the settings, but it’s more of a distraction than a feature. Likewise, some of the attack animations feel superfluous. I enjoy seeing my units emote while attacking, but I don’t need the lines and circles indicating targets and areas of effect.
Is Hero 2048 right for you?
Hero 2048 is only a couple of bucks, and it’s not filled with ads, but if I’m paying money, I want a finished game, and Hero 2048 isn’t “done.” The devs are adopting a “seasonal” approach to the game’s content (we’re currently in the second season), where the leaderboards are cleared and new features are added periodically. I would say Hero 2048 is closer to a paid beta than a proper release, but there is a demo out there so you can give it a try before you buy it.
| Developer | Genre | Price |
| ONW Studio | 2048 tower defense | $1.19–$1.49 |
ONW Studio is on to something here, but the magic it does have is very nearly overshadowed by its sloppy UI implementation and some confusing gameplay mechanics. Still, I had fun playing Hero 2048, and I’ll probably check out its updates for season 3. But I think I’ve gotten all that this game has to give for now.
