2048
By Gabriele Cirulli · MIT license. Source · All credits
About 2048
2048 needs no introduction if you've played it before: slide numbered tiles together, matching pairs to double their value, and try to reach the 2048 tile without filling the board. This is the same core game that made the format popular, no extra mechanics tacked on.
How to play
Swipe or use arrow keys to slide all tiles in one direction at once.
Rules of 2048
- The board is a 4x4 grid. Swipe, or press an arrow key, and every tile slides as far as it can in that direction.
- When two tiles showing the same number collide they merge into one tile of double the value.
- A tile that has just merged cannot merge again on the same move.
- After every move a new tile appears on a random empty square. It is a 2 most of the time and occasionally a 4.
- Reaching a 2048 tile wins, though you can keep playing past it.
- The game ends when the grid is full and no two neighbouring tiles match.
- Keep your largest tile pinned in one corner and never swipe in the direction that would move it out.
- The board starts with two tiles already on it, not one.
- Every move spawns one new tile in a random empty cell. It is a 2 nine times out of ten and a 4 the other one, which is why a board that keeps handing you 4s feels unfair and genuinely is unlucky.
- A move only counts if something actually shifts or merges. If nothing on the board can move in that direction, the swipe is ignored and you do not get a new tile from it.
Controls
- Swipe in any direction to slide every tile
- Arrow keys on a desktop
What makes it worth playing
- Two tiles of the same number merge into their double
- Every move slides the whole board, so there are no free moves
- Score and best score are kept between sessions
- The original 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli, not one of the many rewrites
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-08-26.
Tips from playing it
- Pick one corner and never move your biggest tile out of it.
- Only use the fourth direction when you have no other legal move.
- Build your big tiles along one edge so they merge in order.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
Chosen because it is genuinely good and its licence (MIT) allows us to host and modify it, which we verified in the project's own files. We host it on our own servers, so it loads straight into the game with no third-party ad code and no pre-roll video. It arrived using a gameplay screenshot as its icon, which looks poor at tile size, so we drew it a proper one. We played it through on a real phone-sized screen on 2026-08-26 before publishing this page, and the screenshots above are from that session rather than from the original project.
More on how we pick and fix these: what we changed in the open-source games and how we test a game.
- Category
- Puzzle
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- One player.
- Difficulty
- Trivial to learn, genuinely hard to reach 2048
- Typical session
- 5 to 15 minutes a run
- Last tested by us
- 2026-08-26
- Created by
- Gabriele Cirulli (MIT)
