2048 FAQ

2048 was created by Gabriele Cirulli, a 19-year-old Italian web developer, who coded it over a weekend and released it on 9 March 2014 as open source (MIT licence). He was inspired by 1024 (Veewo Studio) and Threes! (Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend, February 2014). Learn more →

On each move, every tile slides in one direction (up, down, left, right). Two tiles of the same value that touch merge and their values add up (2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8…). After each move, a new tile (2 or 4) appears. You win by creating the 2048 tile and lose when the grid is full with no merge possible.

In Threes!, cards 1 and 2 make a 3, then only identical cards merge (3, 6, 12…), and they move only one cell per move. In 2048, tiles are powers of two and slide all the way to the edge of the grid. Threes! is more demanding; 2048 is faster and more accessible. Learn more →

The game is free, runs in the browser with nothing to install, and its rules can be understood in seconds. Its open-source code was copied thousands of times, multiplying variants and shares. According to its creator, the site received more than 4 million visitors in less than a week. Learn more →

Keep your biggest tile in a corner, play mostly two directions (for example down and left), keep that corner's row always full and arrange tiles in a snake, in decreasing order. Avoid the move that pulls your big tile out of its corner, and play slowly when the grid fills up. Learn more →

About a thousand. A merge doesn't change the sum of the tiles on the board; only new tiles increase it, by 2.2 points per move on average. So it takes at least about 930 moves for the sum to reach 2048. Learn more →

On the classic 4 × 4 grid, the biggest theoretically possible tile is 131,072 (2¹⁷). On a 5 × 5 grid like 2048 Deluxe's, it rises to 67,108,864 (2²⁶). In general, with k cells, the maximum is 2^k+1. Learn more →

Each merge earns the value of the tile created. Building the 2048 tile from 2s alone earns 20,480 points; with the 4s that appear directly, the score is around 20,000 points in practice. Learn more →

Yes. AIs based on the Expectimax algorithm reach the 2048 tile in almost every game and regularly go beyond 16,384. The game is not "solved", though: because of chance, no strategy wins 100% of the time. Learn more →

2048 Deluxe is a premium version of 2048 developed by ULTIM8 Games by Oceanide. It is played on a 5 × 5 grid, with 10 levels (from Scout to Titan), 4 power-ups, a Flux gauge and 8 badges to unlock. Learn more →

Yes. 2048 Deluxe is free to play, directly in the browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install.

Yes. There is a mobile version (portrait, touch) and a desktop version (keyboard). When you click "Play", the site detects your device and opens the right version automatically.

The website is available in English and French. The game's interface itself is currently in French, but the rules are universal and the guides on this site explain every element.

5 × 5 leaves more margin: 25 cells instead of 16, so mistakes are easier to recover from and reaching 2048 is more achievable. In return, games are longer and go much further: 2048 is just a milestone. Learn more →

Four power-ups: the Bomb (removes a tile, earned with your first 32 tile), the Mega Bomb (up to 3 tiles in a 3 × 3 area, 128 tile), the Mega Bar (clears a row, 512 tile) and the Second Chance (when the game is lost, removes the smallest tile so you can continue, 1024 tile). They are joined by the Flux gauge and the Combo, which reward merge streaks with an X2 tile. Learn more →

With the open-source game engine Godot, exported to WebAssembly: the game runs in the browser almost as smoothly as an installed app. Learn more →