How to play 2048
Controls
On desktop, press the arrow keys or WASD to slide the entire board in that direction. On a phone or tablet, swipe across the board the same way you'd flick a card. Every move slides every tile as far as it can go, merging same-value tiles it meets along the way. A new 2 (or occasionally a 4) appears in a random empty cell after each move. New game resets the board immediately.
The objective
Merge tiles to build up to a 2048 tile — but you can keep playing past that for fun. Your score is the sum of every merge: pairing two 8s into a 16 adds 16 to the total, and so on. The round ends when no move would change the board (every cell is full and no neighbors match).
Tips
- Anchor your biggest tile in a corner and only swipe in three directions instead of four. That keeps the heaviest tile from wandering and getting stuck.
- Build a "snake" along one row. Keep tiles sorted in descending order around the corner; new tiles flow into the open end.
- Never panic-tap. A bad swipe can scatter your carefully-stacked tiles. Slow down and verify before each move.
A little history
2048 was made in March 2014 by Italian developer Gabriele Cirulli over a weekend, riffing on Veewo Studios' 1024 and Asher Vollmer's Threes! It went viral in days. Cirulli published it as open source and it has since spawned countless variants, including 3D, hex, and infinite-grid versions.
Accessibility
Arrow keys give a full keyboard interface. The status banner is an ARIA live region. Tile colors come with bold numeric labels so color-blind players can distinguish values by reading.