Around 3.33 years ago, the development duo of Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend released one of the best puzzlers of mobile gaming’s glory days: the adorable and addictive Threes! It’s a game about mashing together numbered tiles to create ever-bigger numbers. As the digits increase, so does the complexity of the cute little characters that represent each number. For even the best, most obsessive Threes! players, Volleo, the lionlike tile that represents 6,144, is the last numerical buddy you meet, but apparently, there’s an even bigger character that has been flying under the radar since the game’s release.
Earlier today, the fan blog ThreesPorn posted a series of tweets that show what happens when you combine two Volleos. When the tiles come together, the game breaks away to a short cut scene that celebrates the arrival of the final character, a beaming, angelic figure with a crown of triangles. Once it materializes, nearly 1.6 million points are added to your score, and the game ends for real. You even get a “Thank you for playing” message.
A quick YouTube search shows this isn’t the first time the ending has been discovered, but this is the first time it was acknowledged by the developers and made its way out to Threes! fans at large. Vollmer, the game’s designer, told ThreesPorn that he’s looking back through leaderboards and trying to figure which high scores were achieved by reaching the end and which are just cheaters, but he admitted it’s very difficult to tell after all these years. At least now we know that there is an ending and that Vollmer might get around to giving that glorious 12,288 a name.
[via The Verge]