The original 2048 (2014)
| Release date | 9 March 2014 | source |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | Gabriele Cirulli, 19-year-old Italian web developer | source |
| Development time | One weekend | source |
| Licence | MIT (open source) | source |
| Inspirations | 1024 (Veewo Studio) and Threes! (released 6 February 2014) | source |
| First-week audience | More than 4 million visitors, according to its creator | source |
| Grid | 4 × 4, i.e. 16 cells | source |
| New tile after each move | 2 in 90% of cases, 4 in 10% of cases | source |
| Average gain per move | 2.2 points added to the board's sum | details |
| Moves needed to reach 2048 | About 930 at minimum, around a thousand in practice | details |
| Score when reaching the 2048 tile | About 20,000 points (20,480 at most) | details |
| Theoretical biggest tile | 131,072 (2¹⁷) | details |
| Merge steps from 2 to 2048 | 10 steps (2 → 4 → … → 2048) | details |
| Best AIs (Expectimax algorithm) | Reach 2048 in almost every game, regularly beyond 16,384 | source |
2048 Deluxe spec sheet
| Publisher | Oceanide Services (Nantes, France), ULTIM8 Games brand | details |
|---|---|---|
| Grid | 5 × 5, i.e. 25 cells | details |
| Theoretical biggest tile | 67,108,864 (2²⁶) | details |
| Levels | 10, from Scout (0 XP) to Titan (5,184 XP), then "Ascendant" | details |
| Power-ups | 4: Bomb (32 tile), Mega Bomb (128), Mega Bar (512), Second Chance (1024); max 2 charges each | details |
| Bonuses | Flux gauge (capped at 100), Combo, special X2 tile | details |
| Missions per game | 3: chain 3 merges, make 12 merges, create a 128 tile (+120 XP each) | details |
| Badges | 8: tiles 4, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and 2048 created by merging | details |
| Game engine | Godot, exported to WebAssembly | details |
| Versions | 2: desktop (keyboard) and mobile (touch, portrait) | details |
| Interface language | French (this website is available in English and French) | details |
| Price | Free, no sign-up, nothing to install | details |
Biggest possible tile by grid size
With k cells, the biggest theoretically reachable tile is 2k+1: every intermediate tile must fit on the board at the same time, and then a 4 must appear in the right place.
| Grid | Cells | Theoretical max tile |
|---|---|---|
| 3 × 3 | 9 | 1,024 |
| 4 × 4 (classic 2048) | 16 | 131,072 |
| 5 × 5 (2048 Deluxe) | 25 | 67,108,864 |
| 6 × 6 | 36 | 137,438,953,472 |
Timeline
| 1880s | Craze for the 15 puzzle, 15 tiles to slide around a 4 × 4 grid | |
|---|---|---|
| 6 February 2014 | Threes! released on iPhone (Asher Vollmer, Greg Wohlwend, Jimmy Hinson) | |
| Feb–March 2014 | Release of 1024 (Veewo Studio), then a first web "2048" by Saming | |
| 9 March 2014 | Gabriele Cirulli releases 2048 on GitHub, as open source | |
| March 2014 | More than 4 million visitors in under a week; explosion of variants | |
| Late March 2014 | The creators of Threes! publish their design archive in response to the clones | |
| 2026 | Launch of 2048 Deluxe (ULTIM8 Games) on 2048deluxe.fr, on a 5 × 5 grid | |
Citing this page
You can reuse these figures by citing: "2048 facts and figures", 2048 Deluxe (ULTIM8 Games), https://2048deluxe.fr/en/2048-facts/. Detailed explanations are in The hidden maths of 2048 and in the FAQ.