Number Sliding Puzzle (2048-Style)

How to play

1. Slide all the tiles in one direction: swipe on the board (phone or tablet), or press an arrow key or W, A, S, D on a keyboard.
2. Tiles move as far as they can. When two tiles with the same number touch, they merge into one tile worth their sum: 2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8, and so on.
3. After every move, a new tile appears on a random empty cell: a 2 nine times out of ten, a 4 otherwise.
4. Try to build a 2048 tile. When you get there, you can keep playing for a higher score.
5. The game ends when the board is full and no two neighbouring tiles match.

Undo (or the U key) takes back your last move, once. New game starts a fresh board. Your Score goes up by the value of every merged tile, and your Best score is saved in this browser. The current game is saved too, so you can close the tab and come back later.

Rules in detail

• A tile can merge only once per move. Sliding a row of 2, 2, 2, 2 to the left gives 4, 4, not 8.
• Merging starts from the side you slide towards. Sliding 2, 2, 4 to the left gives 4, 4 (the first two 2s merge), not 2, 8.
• A move that does not change anything does not count and does not add a tile.
• The new tile is placed with an unbiased random draw from your browser’s cryptographic generator, so every empty cell has the same chance.

Strategy tips

• Pick a corner and stay there. Keep your largest tile in one corner, for example bottom left, and mostly use only two or three directions (down, left and right). Avoid the fourth direction unless you have no choice.
• Build a chain. Line up tiles in decreasing order along the edge next to your big tile (1024, 512, 256…). Merges then cascade towards the corner.
• Keep the edge row full. If the row with your big tile is full, a sideways move cannot drag the big tile out of its corner.
• Think one move ahead. Before sliding, look at where the new tile could appear and whether it could block your chain.
• Use Undo wisely. It only goes back one move, so use it to rescue a real mistake, not to fish for a better random tile.

The score is the sum of all merges. Reaching 2048 usually gives a score around 20,000, and experienced players push on to 4096 and beyond.

Where the game comes from

Sliding-tile puzzles go back to the 15 puzzle of the 1870s. The merging-number idea became famous in 2014, when the Italian developer Gabriele Cirulli released an open-source web game built on 4 × 4 merging tiles, inspired by the earlier games Threes! and 1024. It spread quickly and “2048” became the common name for the whole genre. This version is an original implementation with its own design and colours.