A four-by-four board of numbered tiles. Slide the board and everything moves at once; tiles showing the same number marry into one worth double. Getting to 2048 is the stated goal — keeping the board from seizing up is the actual game.
The goal
You start with two tiles on a sixteen-cell grid. Every move slides every tile as far as it can go in the direction you chose, and any two equal tiles that run into each other combine into a single tile worth their sum: two 2s become a 4, two 4s become an 8, and so on up the ladder. Make a tile showing 2048 and you have won.
Winning doesn't end it. When 2048 appears the game says so and then hands the board straight back to you, still live, with the same score running. Plenty of players are really chasing 4096 or 8192, which need the same skills applied for longer. The run only ends when the board is completely full and no two neighbouring tiles match — at that point there is no legal move left, and whatever score you had is your score.
The rules here are the original ones, without additions. No power-ups, no timers, no extra modes, no way to delete a tile you regret. The only thing standing between you and a long run is where you put things.
Controls
- SwipeAnywhere on the screen, in any of the four directions. This is the main phone control.
- Arrow keysUp, down, left, right. WASD does the same thing.
- ZUndo the last move. Backspace works too, as does the undo button.
- NStart a new game.
- EnterDismiss the win or game-over card. Space does the same.
The swipe is deliberately forgiving: a short deliberate drag registers, and so does a fast flick that barely travels. You don't need to swipe across the board itself — anywhere on the page that isn't a button will do, so your thumb never has to reach over what you're trying to read. The page itself never scrolls, so a stray downward swipe moves the board rather than the browser.
How merging works
This is the part that decides whether the board behaves the way you expect, so it's worth being precise about it.
A move takes each row (or column, depending on the direction) and pushes everything toward the wall you swiped at, closing all the gaps. Then, working from that wall inward, each pair of equal neighbours merges. The rule that surprises people is this one: a tile that has just merged cannot merge again on the same move. A row of 4 4 4 4 swiped left becomes 8 8 — not 16. That single rule is why big tiles take real work to build, and it is the same rule the original game uses.
Order matters too. A row of 4 4 8 swiped left gives you 8 8, because the pair nearest the wall goes first. The same row swiped right gives you 4 16. Which way you approach a line changes what comes out of it.
A move that changes nothing is not a move. If you swipe into a wall everything is already jammed against, nothing slides, nothing merges, no new tile appears and nothing is spent. You can lean on this: probing a direction to see whether it does anything is completely free.
After any move that did change the board, a new tile drops into a randomly chosen empty cell. It's a 2 nine times out of ten and a 4 the other one. That's the pressure: you clear space and the board immediately takes a little of it back.
How scoring works
You score for merging, and only for merging. Every merge adds the value of the tile it produced: combining two 4s into an 8 adds 8 points, two 512s into a 1024 adds 1024. Moving tiles around without combining them scores nothing at all, however tidy it looks.
One consequence is worth internalising: a single big tile is worth far more than the same total spread across small ones, because every merge on the way up was also scored. Building a 1024 pays you for the 1024 and for every 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512 you went through to get there. Chasing the biggest tile and chasing the best score are the same pursuit.
Your best score is kept on your device and shown beside the live one, and the board you're in the middle of is saved as you play — close the tab, come back tomorrow, and the game is exactly where you left it.
Undo
The game keeps your last 24 moves and will hand any of them back, one at a time, with Z or the undo button in the corner. It's there so a mis-swipe doesn't cost you a good run, and it also works from the game-over card — if the board just locked up, you can take back the move that did it and try another direction.
Used honestly it's a great teacher: undo a bad move, take the other option, and watch what the board does differently.
Strategy that actually works
Pick a corner and never leave it
This is the whole game in one sentence. Choose a corner — most people find bottom-left easiest — and keep your largest tile parked there for the entire run. Everything else is in service of that. A big tile loose in the middle of the board is dead weight: nothing can merge with it, and it splits your open space in two.
Use two directions, not four
If your anchor is bottom-left, play almost entirely with down and left. Those two keep pressing everything back toward the corner you care about. Reach for right only when neither works, and treat up as close to forbidden — one upward swipe can lift your biggest tile out of the corner, and there is often no way to get it back.
Keep the bottom row loaded
With a bottom-left anchor, aim for a bottom row that reads in descending order from the corner: something like 1024, 256, 64, 16. That shape merges in a chain — the second-largest eventually meets its match, becomes what the largest needs, and the whole row shifts up a rung. A full, sorted bottom row is also a wall: it stops new tiles falling below your big ones.
Build snakes, not clumps
Extend the same idea to the whole board: descend along the bottom row, then back along the row above it, so the values wind through the grid like a snake. Merges then cascade along that path instead of stranding a big tile with nothing to pair with.
Don't chase small merges
Combining two 2s in the far corner because you can is usually a wasted move — it spends a turn and invites another tile. Move when a move improves the shape of the board, not because something merged.
Watch your empty cells
Free cells are the real currency. Once you're down to two or three, you are one awkward spawn away from having to swipe in a direction you don't want. When space gets tight, stop building and spend a few moves clearing small tiles out of the way.
Learn the recovery move
If your anchor tile does get displaced, don't panic-swipe. Find the move that returns it to the corner — often a single sideways press followed immediately by a downward one — and accept losing a little board shape to get the anchor home. An anchored board with a mess in it recovers; an unanchored tidy board doesn't.
Good to know
- Your best score and your unfinished board are saved on your device. No account, nothing sent anywhere — and clearing your browser data clears both.
- The board is always four by four, on every device. A phone and a laptop are playing exactly the same game; only the size of the tiles changes.
- Tile colours climb a deliberate ramp — bone and sand at the bottom, through the oranges, into gold from 128 up — so you can read the state of the board at a glance without stopping to parse every number.
- There is no time pressure anywhere in the game. Sit and look at the board for as long as you like; nothing moves until you move it.