How to play 2048

2048 takes about ten seconds to learn and a surprisingly long time to finish. The rules below are the complete set — not a summary — including the parts that trip people up: why some key presses appear to do nothing, how the score is actually calculated, and the precise condition that ends a game.

The rules

You play on a 4×4 grid. Two tiles are placed to start, and every tile that ever appears is either a 2 or a 4— a 2 about nine times out of ten.

Each move slides every tile on the board as far as it will go in the direction you chose. When two tiles carrying the same number collide, they merge into a single tile of double the value: two 4s become an 8, two 8s become a 16, and so on. Immediately after the board settles, one new tile appears in a random empty cell.

Reach a 2048 tile and you have won. You are not forced to stop there — a “Keep going” option lets you carry on for 4096, 8192 and beyond.

The merge rule people get wrong

A tile can only merge once per move. Push a row of 4 4 4 4 to the left and you get 8 8, not a single 16. The pairing also starts from the edge you are moving toward, so 4 4 4 0 moved left becomes 8 4 — the first two tiles pair up and the third is left over, not the other way around.

Why a move sometimes does nothing

If a direction would neither slide a single tile nor merge a single pair, it is not a legal move: the board stays put and no new tile appears. This matters more than it sounds. It means you can safely press a direction to test it without being punished by a spawn, and it is also why the game does not end simply because the board looks full.

Every control

Most descriptions of 2048 mention the arrow keys and stop there. This build accepts considerably more:

Any key press combined with Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Cmd is ignored, so browser shortcuts keep working while you play. Swipes are only read on the board itself, which means you can still scroll the page with a finger anywhere else.

How scoring works

Your score is not the largest tile, and it is not the number of moves. Every merge adds the value of the tile it creates. Merging two 256s adds 512 points. Nothing else scores: sliding tiles around without merging them is worth zero.

One consequence is that the score is almost entirely determined by which tiles you have built, not by how you built them. A finished 2048 tile accounts for 20,480 points by itself, because every merge underneath it had to happen — a little less in practice, since each 4 that spawns saves you the merge that would otherwise have created it. That is why experienced players sometimes compete on the opposite axis — reaching 2048 in as few moves and with as low a score as possible, which means wasting nothing.

Your best score is stored in your browser’s local storage, as is the game in progress. Close the tab mid-game and the same board is waiting when you come back. Nothing is uploaded and no account is involved, but clearing site data or playing in a private window will reset both.

When the game actually ends

It is not “when the board is full”. The game ends only when both of these are true:

1. There is no empty cell left, and
2. no two neighbouring tiles share a value — no vertical or horizontal pair anywhere on the grid can merge.

A completely full board with a single matching pair still has a legal move, and that merge frees a cell, which allows another move. This is the difference between a board that looks lost and one that is, and it is worth checking every neighbouring pair before you give up.

The tiles, all the way up

Because every tile is a power of two and the board holds sixteen of them, the ladder does not stop at 2048:

Four mistakes that end runs early

• Using all four directions freely. Every direction you allow yourself is another way for your largest tile to get pulled off its edge. Most strong play uses two directions constantly, a third rarely, and the fourth almost never.
• Chasing merges wherever they appear. A merge available in the middle of the board is often worth skipping, because taking it drags structure out of position for a one-tile gain.
• Letting a small tile get boxed in. A 2 surrounded by much larger tiles cannot merge with anything and occupies a cell for the rest of the game. Deal with it while it still has a neighbour it can reach.
• Moving fast when the board is nearly full. With two or three empty cells left, a single careless direction can be unrecoverable. This is exactly the point where slowing down pays.

For what to do instead — and which of the commonly repeated tips actually hold up when you measure them — see 2048 strategy, tested. If you would rather see a strong move than read about one, the built-in solver will point at the board.