Thanks! I shouldn&#x27;t take all the credit for it though. The game is basically a clone of the two games I&#x27;ve been inspired by, as an attempt to make my own version and learn new things along the way!

Love this! Just when you think that a genre like tile puzzle games has been completely done, something like this comes along and shows a new way of thinking about it.The most amazing thing about this game is how it manages to be so creative and different while being so simple.

This is just like Threes:<a href="http://asherv.com/threes/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;asherv.com&#x2F;threes&#x2F;</a>I have it on my iPhone and it&#x27;s fun.

If you&#x27;ve got an Android phone, Slide (<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pentapixel.slidefree" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=net.pentapixel...</a>) is pretty similar (yet not quite the same).

I love it! Really great and well done.I&#x27;d appreciate it, if someone can share a few more links with similar puzzlers on the web.

It&#x27;s similar, but different. With Threes you combine 1s and 2s to make 3s, then similar numbers to double them. Also, the tiles in Threes only shift at most one spot at a time - with this game, everything&#x27;s flung to the other side of the board.

I agree, there&#x27;s something satisfying about sliding all the things with just one keystroke.  I wonder if it&#x27;s like that desire to chuck things in parabolic arcs that made Angry Birds so popular?  I actually bought Threes from the iOS App Store but I&#x27;ve spent much more time on this game for whatever reason.

I had more fun with this than Threes. I think it&#x27;s how the tiles slide all the way over.

Stealing all your contacts takes time, you know?...

It is very strange. Is the app not written with native code?

It&#x27;s much better than Threes because there&#x27;s not a single reason why Threes should take almost 1 min to start on iPhone 4S.

No one has mentioned it yet, but this is an in browser version of the excellent iOS app Threes: <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/30/addictive-ios-puzzling-comes-in-threes/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joystiq.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;30&#x2F;addictive-ios-puzzling-com...</a> (no affiliation, just a fan)

agreed, was just playing that moments before seeing this coincidentally.

Reminds me threes: <a href="http://asherv.com/threes/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;asherv.com&#x2F;threes&#x2F;</a>

This game is not the same dynamic as Threes.  Both are great games and worth checking out.

See also the original iPhone game: <a href="http://threesgame.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;threesgame.com</a> (Support the developers! It&#x27;s a great game.)Or a truer JS clone: <a href="http://threesjs.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;threesjs.com</a>

I think I should consider the 256 tile that I got in the second game a moral victory and quit my browser before I seriously trash my schedule today. :)

well done! I got only to a 512 block tile.

I did :)<a href="http://i.imgur.com/nf25AVZ.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;nf25AVZ.png</a>

The source code&#x27;s here, in case anyone is interested: <a href="https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gabrielecirulli&#x2F;2048</a>

I got the hang of it during my first play, and ended up with 512 with a 256. I suspect there may be a system that lets you clean up the mess without creating too much new mess.

10 minutes is farther than I got... I only now realize after the first run how to play the game.  Dang, that can get addicting.

So I&#x27;m playing this since 10 minutes now and I have no idea what so ever I&#x27;m doing but it makes me feel like I&#x27;m performing well.

Maybe Monday morning is finding me too pedantic, but this is similar to Threes (<a href="http://threesgame.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;threesgame.com</a>), not just like Threes. There are some pretty obvious differences, from the movement of the tiles to the requirements for tile mergers (multiples of 2 rather than 3). The comments thus far do not make that distinction.

Right now there are around 2100 people on the site and an average visit duration of around 4 minutes :)

Out of curiosity, I&#x27;d love to hear what your Google Analytics graphs look like! How long to people spend playing it?

I&#x27;ve started playing threes a week ago. Both threes and 2048 are fun to play. Except that I think in threes the challenge starts earlier in the game and every step counts and you can easily get into a deadlock.
Can&#x27;t wait to see the source code and analytics. Maybe you want to add on the page the highest score :)

This is very fun and addicting, now I just have to get some work done.

&gt;I know this is a browser game but<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/WebAPI/Detecting_device_orientation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;WebAPI&#x2F;Detecting_device_o...</a>

So addictive. You know since tiles slide to the edge it would be great if this took advantage of accelerometers to allow tile combining by tilting. I know this is a browser game but if you ever create an app using the tilt motion to combine tiles would be awesome. :)

I&#x27;ve been playing this all day today. I basically created my own demise.

Two hours straight and managed to get once to 1024.

just spent a few hours on this. I&#x27;m in love-hate relationships with the author now

&quot;I am sorry &#x27;2048&#x27; users, 22 hours from now, I will take &#x27;2048&#x27; down. I cannot take this anymore.&quot;Note: shameless parody plagarism, (original: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7386459" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7386459</a>), but this thread has 20x points.

Holy shit I just lost like 45 minutes to this.

Likewise. I had one game where I had a 256 block and two 128 blocks, but I ran out of room to maneuver before I could combine the 128s to another 256 and then combine the 256s to a 512.

I prefer Trip actually, it has the same rules as Threes, but it&#x27;s much harder to get a high score compared to Fives. Because you only ever get 1, 2 or 3 as the new card, everything needs to be built up from there, it requires a lot more thought and planning. <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.ginik.trip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=ca.ginik.trip</a>

You might also want to check out Even -- <a href="http://bit.ly/even-game" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;even-game</a> -- have fun!

Very fun game! Love the dynamic, couldn&#x27;t get higher than 256 though. Also check out Fives for Android--somewhat similar: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rcg.fives" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.rcg.fives</a>

Make sure not to get addicted!Hah. It&#x27;s binary crack.

Or an expansion on that. Keep track of how many 128s, 256s etc you&#x27;ve ever formed. Show them as big counters directly under the game with an animation when you create any of them.

You definitely need to have some kind of counter for how many times someone has reached 2048, and out of how many games played.

I was so addicted to Drop7, and so annoyed at the crappy Android version, I made my own HTML&#x2F;JS version with appcache, so I could play it in chrome offline: <a href="https://github.com/pavellishin/drop7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pavellishin&#x2F;drop7</a>

I haven&#x27;t been this addicted to a game since Drop7.

Great &quot;time waster&quot; - just got 5752 score from first try! Very well executed, who cares if its a clone! :) Great job!

Yes! At the very least put up a BTC or Dogecoin address we can send donations to!

Or you can download Even (free!) that I launched last week -- <a href="http://bit.ly/even-game" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;even-game</a> -- have fun!

Please allow me to throw money at you somehow

&quot;EDIT: Make sure not to get addicted!&quot;Oh, no we have another Flappy Story in the making here!

I thought about this for 5 minutes and really got nowhere. Can anyone come up with a nice analytic way to think about an algorithm?There are a couple of brute force approaches: a) always pick the direction that will result in the most blocks to combine, b) always pick the direction that will result in the largest score.

Programmer Step #2 - write an automated solver :)

Two hours lost at uni today and checking hn first thing back home... nooooooo! I will now proceed to waste time. Good job! :)edit: Ok, some random friend just emailed me and told me to check out your game. This friend does not hang out at the online places I do. It seems to be on fire!

Shit I just spent like 4 hours. I have final exams next week. You are evil!

a bit lower:
<a href="http://imgur.com/yPnUt8N" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;yPnUt8N</a>

Wow, that was fun, thanks! It starts to make sense after a while. Are lower or higher scores better? I&#x27;m at 21,204. <a href="http://imgur.com/4tnVPZ4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;4tnVPZ4</a>

Good idea with the letters, but perhaps not necessary.  People are happy with simple numbers.  Just look at Sudoku which doesn&#x27;t use A to I.

&gt; this made it to the top of HN without me even thinking of posting it hereGood for beta testing it.Unlike with Threes, there&#x27;s no real reason to use numbers since they&#x27;re all powers of 2. If you used letters (A, B, C, ...) you could market it to non-HN sorts, and have a version of the game in a 5x5 grid, or, more to the point, in a 6x6 grid with letters A to Z. Most people in the world know the order of letters in English.

I can&#x27;t tell if I despise you or admire you, all I know is that there was light outside my window when I first began playing this, and now it&#x27;s pitch dark.Upvoted you to show my anger! :)

Thanks a lot jerk...now ive lost 2 hours of sleep because of this game!  Keep up the good work!

It&#x27;s very coincidental that my game called Even, based on very similar gameplay was launched this past Friday -- <a href="http://bit.ly/even-game" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;even-game</a>(in case folks on Android want to play it)

Oh, _now_ you tell me not to get addicted! &gt;:( You should&#x27;ve made that a splash page to the site, not an edit to a comment on the submission link.But seriously, well done. :) Completely destroyed my productivity.

Ah! This game IS addicting! My highest so far is around 3500.

Hi Gabriele, I created a mirror of your project with an easier memorable name at<a href="http://2048.mx/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;2048.mx&#x2F;</a>:-) Hope that&#x27;s fine. It might take an hour or so for the domain to be accessible for everyone due to DNS cache.

That&#x27;s not quite the minimum points, since occasionally (10% of the time) a 4 spawns, instead of a 2.

awesome game. I love the math<pre><code> 2 * 1024 = 2048
 4 * 512 = 2048
 8 * 256 = 2048
 ..
 1024 * 2 = 2048
 20480 &lt;-- minimum points
</code></pre>
is there a elegant formula to get to the minimum required points?

I won!<a href="http://imgur.com/Y8oVTeQ" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;Y8oVTeQ</a>

Thanks for the swipe gesture support, had fun playing it on the way home.

Finally, at 2:26 a.m. I was successful with a score of 21000 ... that was fun, thank you!

Totally cool, and addictive.  Not exactly news, but at another level, completely HN worthy

I just wasted 60 mins playing this game. And I think I&#x27;m hooked.I hate you. ;)

Extremely addictive and awesome patterns! Well done!

Just wanted to let you know (but wanted to wait before somebody would down vote such a comment here) that I really enjoyed your game, thanks and cheers!

Hey, author here! I&#x27;m pretty overwhelmed that this made it to the top of HN without me even thinking of posting it here :)I made this game as a fun weekend project, inspired by another game called 1024 (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;1024!&#x2F;id823499224</a>) and a spinoff called 2048 (<a href="http://saming.fr/p/2048/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;saming.fr&#x2F;p&#x2F;2048&#x2F;</a>). I did mine to add animations to the latter, which was a bit hard to play without them.I discovered Threes only today, and I had no idea it looked so similar. I searched a bit and it appears as if 1024 is also inspired by Threes, so my game is probably the last of a long chain of clones :PThe code is also open-source. You can find it here: <a href="https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gabrielecirulli&#x2F;2048</a>Feel free to ask me anything, and thanks to everyone for the attention! :)By the way, my highscore is somewhere around 6000. Admittedly, I&#x27;m quite bad at playing my own game :PEDIT: Make sure not to get addicted!EDIT 2: The game now has swipe gestures and vim keys support (added by @rayhaanj)!

Nice, only thing I don&#x27;t like in the game is that I do better scores just doing (repeat((left or right once) + (up till it doesn&#x27;t work anymore))) than when I think about my moves...

I looks like the new block appears randomly. If the new block appeared even if you didn&#x27;t move anything it would be easy, but they don&#x27;t and that can ruin your strategy.I got to a 512 block in a corner and then got blocked by a new block in the same corner.I think the strategy is very simple. Pick a corner and mash keys that move into that corner. For example for bottom-right corner, just mash right and bottom. When you can&#x27;t move anything anymore, move into the direction that keep your highest block in a corner and then continue to mash and hope that a new block doesn&#x27;t appear anywhere close your highest block.
I have gotten a 512 block in 2 minutes twice( score over 6000 ). It would only take time to reach more, and maybe actually look at the board instead of mashing; but that is problematic since the new block appears to be random.1024 could be reached in under an hour and 2048 in a day, i think.It would be better if you got the position of the new block. That way the game would be solvable in some normal time.

I seem to pretty much always get a higher score by button mashing, or going up down left right in rotation than by trying to figure it out. :(

I tried a &quot;tumbling&quot; strategy, where I would press right, down, left, up, repeating. You&#x27;ll see that the blocks end up tumbling around. I was able to get 256 several times.I also tried a very deliberate (and slow) strategy of actively trying to build up the necessary matching blocks and was able to get to 512 with a score of 5900.

So far the best heuristic I&#x27;ve found is to not let smaller blocks get trapped behind bigger ones.

I wonder if there&#x27;s an optimal strategy. Hmm.

Damn... Nice job. Did you use any particular strategy? Obviously the random &quot;birth&quot; of new tiles adds an element of luck to winning, but I&#x27;m sure you  must have used some technique!

Yep! <a href="http://i.imgur.com/nf25AVZ.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;nf25AVZ.png</a>

That&#x27;s intended. In &#x27;Threes&#x27; for the iPhone you have to use that remaining block to solve more as you can see what&#x27;s coming next.

Quite a lot of fun.One minor nit: if the board is full, but you can make a move that will free up a space, you can make that move and the new tile will appear in the newly opened space, but then the game immediately ends afterward. EDIT: OK, apparently this only happens if there are actually no more moves; as long as moves remain the game continues.Also, hitting &quot;space&quot; reset the entire game; I&#x27;d expected it to either do nothing or add a tile without moving.

exactly. I got up to 256 first try and it took quite a while before I ran out of open tiles. 2nd try hit the wall shortly after 128... third time it went so quick and I only had a single 64. addictive and ridiculousness! :-)

This is one of those games that I do best on my first try when I have no idea what I&#x27;m doing, and then do worse and worse the more I think I have a strategy.Fun though!

This is going to get me in trouble....thanks

Check out Fives on Android--similar but I think way more polished, and well, on your phone: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rcg.fives" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.rcg.fives</a>

would definitely agree, its a really fun game!

Yeah I&#x27;m really enjoying it, would love it on Android. It&#x27;s different enough from Threes and Fives to warrant its creation.

I found that smashing the arrow keys was the most effective way to play this game.

Losing that early could be almost as impressive as winning. Think about how hard it would be to miss every question on a multiple choice test.

&gt; So I built a script to randomly press the arrow keys[0]! I let it play a few games, and the highest it got to was 128 before consistently losing. So I guess you&#x27;ll need some decent strategy to get to 2048.That&#x27;s a great idea for testing the depth of simple games. It&#x27;s good to know a baseline score: players should be getting to the 128 tile or better, or else they&#x27;re doing really bad.

If you remove one key it&#x27;ll get to 256. I removed the `down` key and larger blocks started gathering on top, which was advantageous.

Great game! Love the simplicity!I played a round, and got to 512. But toward the end I wasn&#x27;t sure if I was actually playing with a strategy, or just pressing buttons randomly with some thinking involved.So I built a script to randomly press the arrow keys[0]! I let it play a few games, and the highest it got to was 128 before consistently losing. So I guess you&#x27;ll need some decent strategy to get to 2048.0 - <a href="https://gist.github.com/Wayfarer247/9469272" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;Wayfarer247&#x2F;9469272</a>

God damn that&#x27;s addictive, final score: 3040 about an hour wasted at work :P Great concept though, love it.

Nearly beats it most of the time, beats it occasionally!<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379821" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7379821</a>

Fascinating game. Would love to see how an AI would tackle this.

Interesting (somewhat unrelated) question came up at work:What&#x27;s the theoretical max tile value you can get on Three.

shhh... keep quiet or i&#x27;ll get caught!

Managers around the world grieve as they know millions of man hours will be lost.

Looking at the amount of karma, I&#x27;d say yes. Yes, you did. Congratulations!

Fun game! Now if only you can manage to get 2048 upvotes for it... :)

I find it funny that you knew exactly what I meant by my comment, but HN decided to down vote me into oblivion.Whole well. That&#x27;s HN for yea.

I kind of hate myself too, I haven&#x27;t been able to do anything other than playing since I finished building the game :P

Fuck you.okay, awesome game.Still, fuck you.

Not quite: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Zr8piE7.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;Zr8piE7.png</a>Set it to a 6x6 grid.

Heh, nice trick! The only way to get high score is to actually play, though :P

For those &quot;playing&quot; in the javascript console, here&#x27;s one way to get a handle on the (inaccessibly scoped) game objects:<pre><code> GameManager.prototype.__actuate = 
 GameManager.prototype.actuate;
 
 GameManager.prototype.actuate = function() { 
 window.gm = this; 
 this.__actuate();
 }
</code></pre>
On the next move, the game object will exfiltrate itself into the global window namespace.<pre><code> gm.grid.eachCell(function(x,y,_) { 
 gm.grid.cells[x][y] = new Tile({x:x, y:y}, 1024); 
 });
 
 gm.actuate();</code></pre>

Addictive!I have a suggestion that is different from the common. Other than taking this finely open game in to a walled garden, bring flattr or gittip there :).

Yep, this is pretty much the same solution with the right edge instead of the top edge. I got to 1024 and then blundered and couldn&#x27;t get 2048. This thing is addictive though.

I was able to get 2048 building off of your solution. As you said, always keep your highest number in the top right corner. Try to build the next highest numbers up along the right edge, so that you have say, 256, 128, 64, 32 along the right edge. Always keep 4 numbers there, and only use up&#x2F;down&#x2F;right. Then just focus on building whatever number you need next to double the bottom right number, so that you can &quot;chain up&quot; numbers along the right edge and double your highest number in the top right.Kind of hard to explain in words, but hopefully that helps!

The key is to have a well defined &#x27;edge&#x27; between filled and empty areas - so that the high-valued tiles are on the corned away from the emptiness where 2s spawn; and low-value tiles are on&#x2F;near the border.Note that you can&#x27;t afford to keep much unconnected duplicates - near the win point, you need to have 1024+512+256+128+64+32+16+8+4+2 which is 9&#x2F;16 tiles filled already, so a few extra mid-value tiles cut your &#x27;operating space&#x27; to near zero; so you must keep the high-values mostly ordered and agressively eliminate unneeded duplicates.

I think I have the beginning of a solution. The end result should be 2048 on the top-right corner (for the explanation). Always keep the highest value there. To do that never do a down without the right column filled and never do a left without the top row filled. Within those restrictions keep the top row in ascending order by building numbers on the left of the second row, so that they will match above and cascade right in powers of two.I did this successfully for a while and then had no other option but a down without the rightmost column filled and lost my placement.EDIT: A variation of this that works well is to only do up, left and right if at all possible. This keeps the highest values on top making it easier to match top-down. I&#x27;ve been stuck on 512 though.

Very cool. Spent a while trying to get a high score by thinking about it, but in the end managed to beat it just by pressing the arrow keys anticlockwise one after the other!

Right click -&gt; Inspect element (in FF &#x2F; Chrome)?  All sorts of ways to &quot;cheat&quot; there, but not sure what that would accomplish.

Beat it on my first try: <a href="http://cl.ly/image/023K3o2F3X2P" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cl.ly&#x2F;image&#x2F;023K3o2F3X2P</a>

Ok, I give up. I managed to get a 512 and a 256 but then there is so little place to build up…

I never imagined that I would one day feel like I&#x27;m &quot;downing in my own filth of useless powers of 2&quot;.

I managed to get 2048 on my first try. Different enough from Threes to stay interesting, but a lot of the same strategy applies. In Threes though, the number that appears has a higher chance of being a bigger number (24, 48, even higher later) the longer the game goes on. There were a few times I was almost stuck and was able to get out of it by continually moving in the same direction and sucking up 2s.<a href="http://cl.ly/image/462B1P0Y250T" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cl.ly&#x2F;image&#x2F;462B1P0Y250T</a>

I got a single square with 256 in it and a score of 2016 before I got bored. It&#x27;s addictive and fun but a single game is much too long. I would like to lose a few times and improve but with a game this long I get bored before I&#x27;ve even lost the first time.

Really addictive and well done!Wanted to add that the author also created HN Special, an extension for Chrome that makes HN look decent and adds some useful niceties. <a href="https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/hn-special" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gabrielecirulli&#x2F;hn-special</a>

My entire agile team is now impeded because of this game.

That&#x27;s cool! My current strategy is just to keep going until I lose. Admittedly, I&#x27;m pretty bad at my own game :P

This strategy worked quite well for me up until right around where you got to, 11532. Certainly much more effective than just trying to wing it without a strategy.

used the same strategy, lost at about 11.5K after I had to use a down after filling my top two rows. definitely works well.

Excellent strategy.  Got painfully close to victory - 16,516 total.

Won on my first try after my original post! <a href="http://imgur.com/rnGYLY9" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;rnGYLY9</a>Here&#x27;s the new routine:
1. &quot;tumbler&quot; until 128 can move to the upper left corner.2. The highest number on the board is always in the upper left. Make the top row descend left to right.3. Before combining values on the top row, keep hitting up until one of the lower rows will not combine from a left.4. Often, the slot you are filling (eg, top right or one below top right) will have a two. Alternate pressing &quot;left&quot; and &quot;right&quot; until a two appears, allowing you to combine5. Keep the second row locked as soon as possible with unique values ASCENDING left to right. This way you can use up, left and right without moving the slot you are filling on the far left of the second row.There are a few other pattern recognition tricks that you&#x27;ll pick up to aid in filling a slot for higher values. A few other misc tips:* try to keep high number squares close together, and merge up to the top row as soon as possible. Otherwise, they will just close off a slot* You may get a 2 trapped on the top row blocked by a higher value below it. Unfreeze the second row by combining squares &amp; hope that a two appears in the new opening* only 2&#x27;s or 4&#x27;s will appear. They (always&quot;) appear in the space left behind by the previous movement

Made it to 1024: <a href="http://imgur.com/QQUXzCN" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;QQUXzCN</a>. Here&#x27;s my routine:1. &quot;tumbler&quot; until 128: up right down left, repeat2. Get 128 on the top in the middle two slots. Really any edge works, but I&#x27;ll say top for simplicity. Keep a semi-large value on the side with one open slot in top row to prevent sliding. The other side on top is used for staging3. Only use left, right and up. Never let a smaller value get trapped. This rule can only be violated to avoid filling the top three rows with the fourth empty.I lost this game because I mistakenly filled the top three rows, forcing me to use a down. I think this strategy is viable to win however

Ugggg... why was this posted during the 7-Day Roguelike Competition week?? :)

Score of 5756 by hitting [left, right, up] repeatedly.  Is there a pattern that always wins?

he got over 8000 points i think he&#x27;s joing

I think u misunderstood the game. u need to get the number 2048, not 2,0,4,8 in some order. Your score will be around 6k atleast if u win. Also, shit loads of time &#x27;wasted&#x27;.

Edit: I have completely misunderstood this game.Very fun though.

I just repeat Left =&gt; Up =&gt; Left =&gt; Up until I can&#x27;t move any further, then &quot;Right =&gt; Up =&gt; Left&quot; before going back to the left up combo. Keeps the largest values top left and the values decrease towards the bottom right. Stacks the values well for combining and you can easily get 512 =&gt; 1024 without even looking.

The first few times I tried to play, I kept thinking the objective was to get the number 2048 across the first row. Haha.

I was horrible at this so I tried randomizing it instead. So far I am still beating random at 256, the randomized script has reached 128 at most<a href="https://gist.github.com/k0nserv/9472334" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;k0nserv&#x2F;9472334</a>EDIT: Script reached my score of 256EDIT2: Script reached 512

Everything I had planned today has been put on hold until further notice. :)

A seriously great way to spend 30 minutes on hold with Verizon.

Which is about the same score you get if you concentrate and really try hard to get a high score.I think this might be a &quot;hacker&quot; version of the slot machine - the player feels as if he&#x27;s in control while in fact the outcome is pretty random.

Tried 3 games, and the scores were 2700, 1200, 5000. So maybe. But then I wrote a function to play it for me:<pre><code> var manager = new GameManager(4, KeyboardInputManager, HTMLActuator);
 
 function play() {
 manager.restart();
 var m = 0;
 while (!manager.over) {
 manager.move(m);
 m = (m+1)%4;
 }
 return manager.score;
 }
</code></pre>
... and that gets scores between 500 and 3000.(Edit) Histogram of 500 runs:<pre><code> 0k: ***
 1k: *******************
 2k: ****************
 3k: *********
 4k: *
 5k: *
 6k: *</code></pre>

I have some interesting results.The first time I played the game I scored around 3000 points. After that, I tried to slow down and focus on keep the same kinds of numbers together, but after that, I couldn&#x27;t get past 2250.So I wrote a script that used Math.random() to hit the array keys continually, and the score was much lower: 1000.Then I tried the sequence RIGHT UP LEFT DOWN over and over instead of Math.random() I scored significantly higher than all of them, in the 4000s.Does anyone know why this might be?

That&#x27;s true! I noticed it as well, and it&#x27;s pretty awesome.

This simple game really shows how amazing the human mind is. I&#x27;ve never played any variant of this game before and when I first started I was blind to the mechanics of how this worked. I was moving so slowly and would fill up the board quite quickly.After playing this game for 2 hours now my fingers are moving faster than my conscious mind can really follow. In my last game I was doing combo moves taking &quot;2&quot; blocks to &quot;64&quot; blocks in mere keystrokes. I&#x27;ve been surprised several times when things work out.

Very fun and good looking game! Somehow I find it easier than Threes, awesome game!!

The game is super addictive and I figured out a way to get to 11000 in the first hour. It&#x27;s actually an excellent analogy for social network-type products and any business really. If your users belong to different clusters and similar clusters don&#x27;t meet, there is little value and the network doesn&#x27;t become more valuable for anyone. By focusing on the same corner scenario you help similar clusters find each-other consistently and thus amplify value to each-other. I took over one corner and keep stacking on to it with blocks of increasing value, essentially never moving out of it. If you move out of your corder, a different cluster takes hold in it and then everyone in that corner will hesitate to buy into you, even if the other cluster is small - it becomes a thorn in your butt. Great job! I learned something new today (Plague has also been very educational for me so far, but for viral dynamics.)

Yeah, same here. As long as you keep your high numbers against once side and the low numbers against the other, it&#x27;s not hard. Pick one direction that you never ever use and you do fine.

This works remarkably well.  There are some spots where you have to apply logic -- in particular, I found that I progressed best when I built out the top row with my highest blocks (and then push&#x2F;cascade my next highest block into the top when it got to be high enough) and I occasionally had to mash up-right rather than up-left to make that happen.

I managed to beat it following a basic pattern similar to yours:1) Mash up-left (or towards any corner) until blocks stop moving2) Press right3) Start overThe trick is to keep the high numbers in the top corner so the new numbers don&#x27;t spawn behind it, you basically start building towards that corner and things start to work themselves out.Like you, I had to do a bit of actual logic near the end, you can see that I overshot by a small margin and ended up with a 128 block too....<a href="http://i.imgur.com/NA92d3G.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;NA92d3G.png</a>

Lol I&#x27;m kind of sad that the right+down+left+down trick got me further than all of my previous actual attempts hahaha.

First of all, kudos on a well designed game. It&#x27;s obvious you&#x27;ve made something pretty addictive, as evident by the place on HN and the responses you&#x27;re getting here.One thing I&#x27;ve found out is that you can pretty easily get to at least 512 or higher just by repeating the following pattern:<pre><code> right + down + left + down
</code></pre>
Try it out and you&#x27;ll quickly see how it works. Any other similar pattern would also work:<pre><code> right + down + right + up
 up + right + up + left
 left + down + left + up
</code></pre>
I will also sometimes break the pattern to consolidate some of the larger numbers when opportunities present themselves. But other than that, I usually stick to the pattern.Of course, it will only get you so far, because you will eventually run out of space to keep the pattern working. But it will get you past the first few thousand points (512 or higher).

I don&#x27;t know if I should thank you, curse you or burn my computer.I will choose the lesser evil : burn the computer !Thanks ;-)

What an amazing game, I like it very much!Kudos to the creator for the perfect execution and design.

Brilliant game, such simple concept but very addictive. Never seen this before. I love it.

The best thing about this game is that you can press the arrow keys randomly for about five minutes and anyone walking past thinks you&#x27;re incredibly good at the game. Just make sure you lose after they walk past.

A little bit too similar to &#x27;threes&#x27; on the app store.. I like it, but again, it&#x27;s too much of a ripoff.

A simple strategy of building along one side will get you to a 1024 tile every time, but getting to 2048 seems largely dependent on RNG. If you get tiles spawning where you want them, it&#x27;s very easy. If not, it can actually be impossible.It&#x27;s unfortunate that RNG plays a significant role.

As a part-time msie user i can assure you the webkit monoculture has had the same negative consequence on that side of the scale, in fact, it&#x27;s worse on msie than firefox. It seems like nobody does cross-browser testing anymore now that safari and chrome hit a critical marketshare treshold, a bit like how nobody cares about their yslow scores anymore now that browsers are fast at executing javascript.

Are you sure you aren&#x27;t using an outdated cache? I updated it to work with Firefox when I first saw the huge amounts of traffic coming in. Maybe try refreshing a few times.

Animation doesn&#x27;t seem to work in Firefox. Does nobody test in Firefox anymore?This WebKit monoculture is getting quite anything. It&#x27;s msie all over again...

Why do I feel like another good name for this game would be &quot;8 years of running a startup&quot;?

Just pure awesomeness! Been playing it for like an hour :)

I didn&#x27;t do anything at work today. Thanks.

I got a score of 12640, not far off...Very simple strategy: propagate large values upwards (never press down).

I&#x27;ve found simply pushing up, left, down, right, I can routinely outdo the score I can attain by actually playing with thought.... Kind of disappointing, but then I lost hours to this already. Fabulous game!

By tapping the arrows in a clockwise pattern, left-up-right-down-left-etc I got 512 and a score of 6360.

Stop me! I can&#x27;t stop to play this! 45min passed!

This thing is evil - stop killing my time!!!!Great work!

Quick and dirty &#x27;dumb&#x27; solver (might require manual intervention sometimes):<pre><code>		var manager = new GameManager(4, KeyboardInputManager, HTMLActuator);

		&#x2F;&#x2F; Pattern definition (0: Up, 1: Right, 2: Down, 3: Left)
		var pattern = [1, 2, 3, 2];

		&#x2F;&#x2F; Pattern Repeater
		var i = 0;

		&#x2F;&#x2F; Interval
		var solverInterval = window.setInterval(function() {

			&#x2F;&#x2F; Check if game is over
			if (manager.over)
				clearInterval(solverInterval);

			&#x2F;&#x2F; Repeat pattern
			if (i % pattern.length == 0)
				i = 0;

			&#x2F;&#x2F; Execute the move
			manager.move(pattern[i]);

			i++;

		}, 200);
</code></pre>
Best pattern found so far is &quot;var pattern = [1, 0, 3, 0];&quot; I reached 1024 with it. <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21387598/1024-Best.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.dropboxusercontent.com&#x2F;u&#x2F;21387598&#x2F;1024-Best.png</a>

While we are throwing around clones of threes, here is my SEXY clone of titled Menage a Threes. Heh.
<a href="http://www.kongregate.com/games/honkskillet/menage-a-threes" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kongregate.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;honkskillet&#x2F;menage-a-threes</a>Also, protip: to get high score choose one direction that you will never push towards. You&#x27;ll end up with a gradient of high value tiles on one side, lower on the other, which desirable.

Aye. Same here...<a href="http://imgur.com/SMRKbPk" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;SMRKbPk</a>

I decided to take a look just because I saw this:<pre><code> 2048 (gabrielecirulli.github.io) 
 1337 points by frederfred 8 hours ago</code></pre>

I got a 1024 and a 512 playing alone, then somebody appeared and screwed the game in 10 seconds. The &quot;Twitch plays pokemon style&quot; is an very apt.

Hey guys! I made a multiplayer version of this game in about an hour or so. (Twitch plays pokemon style)<a href="http://hnplays2048.herokuapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnplays2048.herokuapp.com&#x2F;</a>Check it out! Or clone it! <a href="https://github.com/grant/hnplays2048" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;grant&#x2F;hnplays2048</a>

Oh, so close. Got a ways into the 1024 tile with a score of 12236.<a href="http://imgur.com/09f1Oj6" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;09f1Oj6</a>

Dude, what a mechanic that is! Just spent 1&#x2F;2 hour in no time. Expand featureset, apply to PSN, profit.

Depressing that my highest block so far after ~1hr play time is less than the number of upvotes this HN post has.Great game by the way!

No, not really. Check some of the other screenshots in this thread. Keep trying! :)

booom 3688 <a href="http://awesomescreenshot.com/0db2gytp66" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;awesomescreenshot.com&#x2F;0db2gytp66</a> (is that good??)

It was inevitable. Twitch Plays 2048(<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplays2048" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.twitch.tv&#x2F;twitchplays2048</a>)

Oh! My productivity! It&#x27;s like the &quot;great sudoku disaster of &#x27;02&quot; all over again!

I wrote a version myself in python and have been playing with strategies. It seems fairly resistant to simple greedy strategies (maximize highest score&#x2F;maximize empty squares&#x2F;etc).In terms of &quot;blind&quot; strategies [up, right, down, left]* works pretty well, but [up, right, up, left]* is by far the best I&#x27;ve found. It gets to 512 about 30% of the time (!), with about 0.2% hitting 1024. Still haven&#x27;t seen a &quot;win&quot; using the blind strategy in several 10,000s of runs.

20484 after about two hours. A few close calls and at times I felt like I was playing Tower of Hanoi leveling up areas. Only pushed up twice.Final part was fast as all you need is two 128 blocks, one 256, a 512 and the 1024.

21304 on my second try after reading your advice. (Probably 8th play or so overall.) Good advice. :)<a href="http://imgur.com/uAZYb1s" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;uAZYb1s</a>

Yeah, good advice. Took me about a day of playing, finally won with 21276 points.

With this technique, the lowest I&#x27;ve scored is in the 6,000s, and that was when I veered from the protocol. (That bloody 3×4)

Won with a score of 20252 thanks to your tips. And 3x4 grid isn&#x27;t impossible to get out of, but you need some luck and a plan (like your staging area)

These are some great tips. By keeping the highest number in corner and making sure I am not forced to move it, I have been able to get till (~20000 score) 1024, 512, 256 etc and then game over :( Going to try again.LOVE the game. Who knew I could single-mindedly focus on one task for hours and not get distracted.

Won with score : 20132
<a href="http://imgur.com/dWiXGaW" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;dWiXGaW</a>

Not many posting winning scores, so here&#x27;s mine: 2048 and 20368 points<a href="http://imgur.com/c3aHuT4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;c3aHuT4</a>I&#x27;m not going to claim it was first try. Probably my tenth. However, I got much better at avoiding the key mistakes:- Always keep your highest number in a corner- Use the rest of that edge as a &quot;staging area&quot; for the components that can next double the highest tile. Work the other tiles toward the opposite corner on that side and then double them upward into the highest corner.- When you double the highest corner, you&#x27;ll expose the &quot;staging area&quot; side. During this time, quickly work number back to fill that side so you avoid being forced to move the highest number out.- NEVER let yourself fill a 3x4 grid. This will force you to move the highest column away from the edge and will probably end the game in a handful of turns.

5000 pts just doing up, down, left, rightI scored worse by actually thinking and applying strategy. this IS a difficult game.

First try scored 2908 Its a very addictive game! Good work!

Totally nerd sniped on this one. Will never get those hours back :-)Meta question: Would it be possible to get 4096?

the blue thing.... windows XP (it&#x27;s my work PC, don&#x27;t ask)Oh and browser is FireFox 27.0.1I suppose i&#x27;ll have to just check this at home to figure out what the fuss is all about

what&#x27;s the blue thing around the screen?am DEFINITELY sure it&#x27;s not hardware because it&#x27;s working on my SUPER FAST laptop (1.1 Dual Core, intel HD, Firefox 27.0.1)so am sure YOU did something

Why isn&#x27;t this working for me?Screenshot: <a href="http://imgur.com/9QzI3Z2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;9QzI3Z2</a>

After about 14 minutes, I got to 1024. It was enjoyable, but is hard when you can&#x27;t swap values. <a href="http://puu.sh/7r2eH.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;puu.sh&#x2F;7r2eH.png</a>

My strategy is to always try to keep the high number blocks on one edge of the square. The highest block should be in the corner, then the blocks should be sorted by decreasing.
E.g :
512 256 128 64...<a href="http://imgur.com/PNRIfW6" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;PNRIfW6</a>

I finally won! 2048 with a score of 20556. This game is evil!

Here&#x27;s my Processing.js clone in 42 lines: <a href="http://www.ktbyte.com/textbook/gamewalkthroughs" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ktbyte.com&#x2F;textbook&#x2F;gamewalkthroughs</a>

Finally won with a score of 20548. At first I was using a strategy of getting the biggest number into a corner. This follows a pattern of mostly up-right-up-right-... with an occasional left or down thrown in to get unstuck. This approach can pretty reliably get you to 512 in the corner without much trouble. But eventually this method saturates the available &quot;storage&quot; space with an inefficient pattern of tiles up to the diagonal. Then you have to start changing things up and continuing becomes tricky.Then I tried the approach mentioned here of left-down-right-down-left... in a very mechanical fashion. I believe that this is very likely the optimal mindless strategy. It works amazingly well. As long as you never hit up, it fills things very efficiently and the biggest numbers percolate down towards the middle of the bottom row.The way I finally won was to take this second approach and augment it with some periods of trying to get the biggest number in the corner. Start with ldrd until you get some 64s or 128s, then slow down and play catch-up with a corner. Then go back to ldrd. Occasionally stopping at strategic places to consolidate things also seems to help quite a bit.All in all, a very fun game with some interesting properties.