Slide tiles on a 4×4 board and merge equal numbers until you make the 2048 tile. Play with swipes, the arrow keys or WASD.
What is 2048?
2048 is a single-player sliding puzzle on a 4x4 grid in which you move numbered tiles and merge equal pairs into larger numbers, aiming to build a tile worth 2048. Every move slides all tiles at once, and every move adds a new tile, so the board slowly fills up unless you keep merging.
The rules fit in two sentences, yet a game can last hundreds of moves. Reaching 2048 takes a plan, because random swiping fills the board long before the big tiles appear.
How to play 2048
A game starts with two tiles on the board. Choose a direction, up, down, left or right, and every tile slides as far as it can that way until it hits the edge or another tile.
When two tiles with the same number run into each other, they merge into one tile with their sum: two 2s make a 4, two 4s make an 8, and so on. A tile can merge only once per move. In a row of four 2s, a move to the left gives 4 and 4, and a second move gives 8. When three equal tiles line up, the two nearest the wall you are moving toward merge first.
After every move that changes the board, a new tile appears on a random empty square. Nine times out of ten it is a 2, otherwise a 4. A move that changes nothing does not count and adds no tile.
Scoring: each merge adds the value of the new tile to your score, so merging two 64s adds 128. When you build the 2048 tile you win, and you can choose Keep going to aim for 4096 and beyond. The game is over when the board is full and no two neighbouring tiles match, so no move is possible.
2048 strategy: the corner method
Pick a corner and keep your biggest tile there. Most strong players use a bottom corner. Every new large tile should be built next to it, so merges flow toward the corner.
Use two main directions. If your corner is bottom-left, play mostly down and left, use right when you have to, and avoid up. Pressing up pulls the big tile out of its corner and lets a 2 drop into the space under it, which is how many good games fall apart.
Keep the edge row full. When the bottom row is completely filled, pressing left or right cannot move the corner tile out of place. A row with a gap is a row that can shift.
Order the row by size. Arrange the bottom row in decreasing order away from the corner, for example 256, 128, 64, 32. When the row is full, continue the chain on the row above in the opposite direction, like a snake. Then one merge at the end of the chain can roll all the way into the corner: two 32s make 64, which meets the 64, and so on.
Keep small tiles away from the corner. New tiles appear anywhere, but your merges should push small numbers to the far side of the board, where they can combine without blocking the chain.
Think one move ahead about the new tile. Before a move, ask where empty squares will be afterwards. If a move leaves the only empty square next to your big corner tile, a new 2 may land there and break your order.
When you must use the forbidden direction, undo the damage at once: press the opposite direction right after so the corner tile returns before a new tile can settle under it.
Numbers behind the game
Each tile is a power of two. Building a 2048 tile only from 2s gives 20,480 points along the way; tiles that arrive as 4s lower that slightly, so a score near 20,000 when you first see 2048 is normal.
On a 4x4 grid the largest tile possible is 131,072. To make it, the board must hold a chain of every power of two from 4 up to 65,536, and the new tile in the last free square has to be a 4.
Where 2048 comes from
2048 was written by Italian developer Gabriele Cirulli and released in March 2014 as open-source code. It was based on an earlier game called 1024 and follows the merge idea of Threes, a sliding number puzzle released a few weeks before. The game spread across the web within days, and many versions with other board sizes and themes followed. Our version keeps the original rules and the original tile colours.
Playing 2048 on Hevagames
2048 on Hevagames runs in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, with no download. Swipe on the board with a finger, a pen or a mouse drag. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys, WASD or H, J, K, L to move, and R to start a new game.
The board scales to your screen and has a compact layout for landscape phones. Your current game and your best score are saved on your device, so you can close the page and pick up where you stopped. There is no undo in this version, so think before each move. The game follows the light or dark theme, and when you reach 2048 you can keep going on the same board.
How to play
- 1Each move slides every tile as far as it can go in one direction.
- 2Two tiles with the same number that run into each other merge into one tile with their sum, and the sum is added to your score.
- 3After every move a new 2 or 4 appears in an empty cell.
- 4Make a 2048 tile to win. You can then keep going for a bigger tile.
- 5The game ends when the board is full and no two neighbouring tiles match.
Controls
Tips
- Keep your biggest tile in one corner and build the row next to it.
- Avoid moves that pull the biggest tile out of its corner.
- Each tile merges only once per move, so a row of four 2s becomes two 4s, not one 8.