2048: Classic

Gabriele Cirulli's 2048 is one of those games I will never get tired of, and there are about a million versions of it on the internet. I wrote this one because every version I tried online was either smothered in ads or had broken swipe input on mobile. The math is unchanged from the original — slide, merge, doubles all the way to 2048 — but the animation curve has been tuned so the merges feel weighty rather than instant.

The single strategy you need to win is the corner anchor. Pick a corner — bottom-right works for most people — and resolve to never move your largest tile out of it. Always swipe down and right when you can; only use up or left when forced. Build a descending staircase along your bottom row, then snake back along the second row. If you do this consistently, you'll hit 2048 within a few games. The 4096 tile is genuinely hard and requires not making a single careless move.

What makes 2048 great

It's a perfect-information puzzle with a tiny element of randomness — you can see every tile, but you can't predict where the next 2 will spawn. That mix of full visibility and slight luck is what makes it endlessly replayable. If you like the math-puzzle vibe, our Sudoku Master is the more cerebral cousin and Block Blaster is the spatial-puzzle one.