This may be buried in the comments and you will never see it, but thank you very much Gabriele. Your game helped me in a very weird circumstance.

I was afraid of flying, specially on the takeoff and landing (and turbulence as well, ha). So I read somewhere that if I focused on something else, it would help me. So for the past years, I played 2048 during takeoff and landing, and it worked. It helped me to focus on something else, not the airplane, and I started to enjoying more my trips.

Now I don't need to do it anymore, but just for the experience I still do it when I fly. So thank you for helping me with my fear!

TypeScript was fairly new at that time and to learn it, I ported 2048 to TypeScript. It was fun!

Fast forward a couple of years, I was debugging an issue with a react component and glanced over the .d.ts of react. I was quite surprised when I saw that my name was in them. I never contributed to react's types myself.

It turned out that someone took some types I wrote for 2048 and used them in the very first type definitions for react: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/commit/4b...

It's still there to this date, but I've lost my TS port in the sands of time.

This doesn't make any sense. We should be celebrating 8 years, 16 years and so on.

Congrats on the 10 year anniversary, though honestly I think having tried your new 2048 I'll go back to the classic build. It might just be the hours I've poured into the original but it feels faster without the additional animation. But still a lot of good work there and I'm wishing you the best of luck.

As for the argument about Threes!, I have to say that I've generally found 2048 to be a much more fun game; the full-screen sliding and the lack of the 1+2 mechanic makes things move much faster, which for me is a priority. That's definitely personal taste, but I hate the vitriol that comes up on the topic.

My favorite 2048 clone by far is https://ashervollmer.github.io/2048/128.html, which is just a 3x3 2048 that only spawns 2. I like it because it is possible to achieve total victory, a perfect game fills the board with a a final score of 7172.

Wow, has it already been ten years? I also wrote a clone of 2048 back then (https://github.com/nieware/gofusion), using Go and a QML-based UI, for a contest, and (to my astonishment) actually won the first prize, which consisted of a Nexus 7 tablet (which served me well for several years) and a rare original vinyl Gopher figurine (which is still sitting on my desk looking at me serenely with its googly eyes while I type this).

I've opened the game without reading the post. When I've hovered over the crown and saw the prime stuff I thought it was some kinda' joke or parody. Turns out it isn't. Which I think is even funnier in some meta/state-of-the-things-today way. As there's nothing left but laugh at the absurdity of our reality.

You know how the distribution of 2-value vs 4-value for new tiles is a weighted random function? And sometimes you get an unlikely 4 that really screw you over? Have you thought about adding a mode which always creates the worst option of the 2?

You could call it “God does play dice with the universe. They're loaded and he hates you.”

For those who haven't heard of Threes, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the original game that 1024, 2048 etc were cloned from (and I think it's still the best by far). Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threes#Legacy

Congratulations!

"Powerups with Amazon Prime" sounds like the famous bug report that grep (I think) should search on Amazon if it doesn't find the string locally, which was submitted IIRC in protest at the Ubuntu "lens" doing just that.

> suddenly it seemed like everyone was playing it

That's exactly how I remember it, yes.

It started with only the tech people, but then it spread to all coworkers, friends, grandparents...

Anyway, congrats on this game but I won't fall in the same trap as 10 years prior, wasting hours upon hours of productivity!

Interesting to see the times for speedruns of this game: https://www.speedrun.com/2048

    2048: 24s
    4096: 1m 37s
    8192: 4m 53s
    16384: 13m 34s
    32768: 55m 24s

Congratulations on creating such a wonderful game. My wife still plays it, I would claim, daily. I would claim it's part of her evening relaxation :) I will most certainly forward your new developments to her and also try it myself. Good luck with your new job.

Just to note to say thanks. Never have I played anything that gives me so much satisfaction. I found I had some weird aptitude for it.

Bravo Gabriele, 2048 was an amazing piece of design and UI. Loved it. You did amazing work.

Cannot believe this is a decade old - will always remember playing 2048 on the NYC subway to school with my friends <3

Fun game. I played for the first time and got a score of 3048, with my largest tile being 256 and no powerups used. Not sure if that's a good score or not.

My one observation is that it didn't feel intellectually engaging until the board was fairly full. Until I got to ~2500 or so, I was just making random-ish moves that felt like they didn't matter much. So it took say 15min before I got to the "good part."

It would be nice if the game could be modified in some way to get to the sweet spot earlier. Maybe starting from a mostly-full "puzzle" board, with varying levels of difficulty.

Or if the early moves actually DO matter more - and my beginner brain just didn't realize it - maybe there's a way to explain that connection to newer players so that they engage their brain earlier on.

Almost feels a bit like chess opening moves, which to a beginner might not feel very impactful, but to an experienced player they can see the connection from that one early pawn move to something meaningful later on in the game.

Hi gab, thanks for sharing. This was fun to play back during our Facepunch era, and it’s still entertaining now.

Random thing I noticed last week: there's a version of 2048 buried in the United Airlines iPhone app. Hamburger -> Games -> 2048.

Thanks so much! I saw 2048 on hn back in the day (10 years?!) and loved it, and then I bought Threes! Which I still play idly today!

On a sidenote: it's been years, but anyone else slightly annoyed that the "Out of Moves" text is still not centered?

This feels so much snappier than the original. I don't know if I'd use the powerups, because usually I play 2048 mindlessly and when I don't really want to think too much, but I might find myself pleasantly surprised in the future.

Always interesting to hear the other side of the story: https://asherv.com/threes/threemails/

HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106

One of my finals during my masters degree required us to implement a 2048 engine using OCaml. I had a bit of practice with OCaml but this specific exercise really made something click in me. It made me understand how to leverage a type system to represent a state, and make impossible states impossible to represent. I don’t use OCaml anymore but this exercise has definitely made me a better developer. That’s in part thanks to OCaml, and in part thanks to 2048 so thank you for inventing the game :)

Sometimes I have trouble listening without my thoughts drifting elsewhere. I found out that playing a Tetris clone that never increases in speed and never ends is a good way to keep a clear focus on listening. After changing phones recently my perfect Tetris clone stopped working as it was 32bit and the support was dropped. I've been looking for an alternative and finally found one in a 2048 clone with an Undo button. I thank you for that. It has saved me a lot of trouble staying focused!

This is still the only mobile game I play (besides chess, if that counts). Thanks for creating such a fun piece of software. It's snappy, beautiful, and tastefully done.

Thank you for building this game, Gabriele! I very much enjoyed playing the game - and later, building what was (at that time) the best AI for the game while procrastinating on my PhD! (https://github.com/nneonneo/2048-ai, https://stackoverflow.com/a/22498940/1204143)

I'd actually built an AI for Threes some time earlier (https://github.com/nneonneo/threes-ai), although (perhaps unsurprisingly) the 2048 AI turned out to be a lot more popular.

The timing is pretty funny too - I was on a flight just two weeks ago that featured 2048 as one of the in-flight games, so I played it myself for a bit, got to 2048, then got my AI to get me to 4096 - and promptly crashed the whole app! Your implementation, even though it took just five days, was remarkably robust and fast and has held up really well all these years - real props to the great job you did.

I guess now I'll have to update my AI for all the powerups you've added to the game :^)

I love 2048 but the page linked in OP is a disgrace: it filled with ad trackers, and the game itself doesn't even work if they're blocked.

It is easy to underestimate any individual's contribution to society, especially if it can be (ridiculously) trivialized as "just a mindless game" (that hurt to type).

2048 has impacted our species. Seriously.

I can assure you from an objective, subjective, authoritative, personal, and collective position: your game has saved many people their sanity, entertained millions, saved/wasted billions, inspired untold people into math, web dev, and game design.

But most importantly, people didn't quit "mindless/thankless/frustrating/demeaning" jobs because their mind was _just_ adequately stimulated by your creation to continue to justify coming to work the next day.

Not demanding enough to command full attention (until we get a 4096, then nothing else matters), but 'choring' enough (in the most charitable sense) to keep people from finding a more or less demanding time-fill, likely compromising their jobs.

Jobs that help others, in an exponential way, sometimes.

Even if this was an isolated incident, I can tell you, you will forever be top 5 (hyper) viral games by a solo developer.

If a butterfly can cause a hurricane, 2048 could just as easily be the reason we survive the next filter, for all we know.

You helped me help others help others. And you deserve to know that.

BTW: I always blocked your ads (no offense, just cognitive stuff).

Drop a donation link somewhere, please.

I made a version with llamas at some point, as a valentine's card. (Source code is yours, I just swapped the images!)

# of llamas = log2(original number)

https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/twothousandandfortyppaca...

I played 2048 A LOT back when it came out. I still fire it up every now and then.

Thanks Gabriele, what a fantastic game you have made.

So I just had a repeat experience playing the game that massively turned me off to replaying it.

Was at 4096, and I tend to bunch up all of my numbers in sequential order like a snake, with the metaphorical head being the bottom left. Well, I was no longer able to avoid swiping down or left, so I had to swipe up. I had the full complement of two undos left, and 8 spare squares for numbers to appear.

Three times in a row, a number appeared in the bottom left when I swiped up. Odds of which should be 1/512 unless the game biases in favor of certain squares for hidden difficulty.

I pretty much decided not to play after that, because it was the third time that's happened. Not yet knowing what the actual code is that decides where new numbers appear, it frustrated me enough to not want to revisit this version of the game.

My favorite version is the wasm implementation written in rust.

Source: https://github.com/dev-family/wasm-2048

Playable here: https://2048.dev.family/

Bug report: digits don’t show for me. (Interesting æsthetic, actually, unmarked tiles.) Firefox, Sway/Linux, Settings → Fonts → Advanced → “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above” disabled, and web fonts blocked altogether via uBlock Origin.

The new power ups are a nice addition that allowed me to reach 2048 more quickly :)

I remember a coworker who said something along the lines of "I am free!" when he finally got 2048, and then never touched the game again. I hope the new power ups will make the game less addictive.

How time flies. I remember I wrote a zero-knowledge AI bookmarklet that did quite well...

http://stackoverflow.com/a/23853848/632039

uBlock Origin blocks 330 items on that page, which I think is a personal record for the sites I have been to.

2048 is only 10 years old, I am shocked.

I found it a while ago when looking for the source of xjumpjump and instantly liked it. Thanks for creating 2048.

Every so often I try and see if xjumpjump is available on cell phones, but none yet.

There are a lot of comments mentioning Threes! and holding it up as superior. I play a lot of games, and I greatly prefer Threes myself -- but I also remember very well when 2048 came out; I was in college, and 75% or more of my dorm had no interest in Threes and preferred playing and remixing 2048. Threes is very stressful and intense, while 2048 goes straight for your brain's pleasure centers, like many other mobile games nowadays.

There's value in that. There's massive value in 2048 that Threes! does not capture. Just because someone spends a lot of time designing something, it does not entitle them to attention or praise. Many great artists get famous for works they absolutely hate. Gabriele has been consistently courteous about all of this for 10 years, and I'd suggest people here could be a bit more courteous to him too.

Was a fun game, I still remember trying it back then!

383,392 points on the first try, using the new powerups. At that point I had a 16384, 8192, 4096, 2048, 1024, 256 and two 128's, but getting that extra 512 and then successfully folding the tiles into a 32768 likely wouldn't have been feasible, even if I had had more luck. I think this was enough for me for a while =D

Your game has inspired me back then to create a game on quickly finding isomorphic graphs. Since then, I haven't created any other game in 10 years. So thank you for a powerful stimulus!

https://vpavlenko.github.io/fluffy-graph/

Thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed 2048 the past 10 years. The new one isn't showing the numbers for me, though. I'm on Firefox on Android. Classic one works perfectly. Works fine on Edge for mobile (only have it for situations like this where I'm tracing browser dependencies).

Here are the threads I could find with 20 or more comments. Smaller threads are listed in a collapsed reply. These are in chronological order for a change:

2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566 - March 2014 (410 comments)

2048 AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379821 - March 2014 (189 comments)

2048 – multiplayer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384974 - March 2014 (113 comments)

2048 x 2 = 4096 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7396134 - March 2014 (24 comments)

2048 in the terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7398011 - March 2014 (88 comments)

2048 with Leaderboard and achievements, with Kivy (Python/OpenGL) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404515 - March 2014 (25 comments)

Show HN: 2048 in 2048 bytes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406605 - March 2014 (54 comments)

2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416777 - March 2014 (66 comments)

2048 in 4D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418219 - March 2014 (113 comments)

Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7431047 - March 2014 (121 comments)

Show HN: Logarithmic Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432448 - March 2014 (64 comments)

HN Plays 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7433524 - March 2014 (81 comments)

Show HN: 2048 Tetris - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435569 - March 2014 (60 comments)

2048 for physicists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7438567 - March 2014 (33 comments)

2048 Numberwang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439444 - March 2014 (110 comments)

Show HN: 2048 without numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443166 - March 2014 (46 comments)

Dropbox 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443379 - March 2014 (2 comments)

8402: 2048 from the other side - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446139 - March 2014 (53 comments)

2(048) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453543 - March 2014 (46 comments)

2048 in sed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7464294 - March 2014 (35 comments)

2048 game to the Atari 2600 VCS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7466097 - March 2014 (22 comments)

2048 Solver - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473486 - March 2014 (38 comments)

Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106 - March 2014 (208 comments)

2048 As A Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510670 - April 2014 (52 comments)

2048 implemented in 487 bytes of C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535666 - April 2014 (45 comments)

2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543483 - April 2014 (51 comments)

Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637009 - April 2014 (32 comments)

2048 in Famo.us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7660206 - April 2014 (21 comments)

2048, success and me - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704800 - May 2014 (222 comments)

Show HN: 2048 in Swift - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7845441 - June 2014 (34 comments)

Implementing 2048 in 90 lines of Haskell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896187 - June 2014 (24 comments)

243 Game – inspired by 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991773 - July 2014 (36 comments)

Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030413 - July 2014 (80 comments)

The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15327837 - Sept 2017 (46 comments)

The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States by Exhaustive Enumeration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15894126 - Dec 2017 (22 comments)

The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790338 - April 2018 (43 comments)

Show HN: 2048.cpp – Play 2048 in directly your terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897283 - Sept 2018 (45 comments)

The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28310842 - Aug 2021 (50 comments)

Show HN: 1024, a 2048 Puzzle Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32405510 - Aug 2022 (48 comments)

Show HN: Exponentile – A match 3 game mixed with 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39897112 - April 2024 (40 comments)

Show HN: King Thirteen: 2048 with chess pieces, in under 13 KB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623814 - Sept 2024 (80 comments)

20k run on the first try, enough for next 10 years https://cdn.jpg.wtf/futurico/8d/36/1729783571-8d36e171f9deb9...

As a newcomer to this platform, I distinctly recall discovering this project as one of my earliest and most cherished memories of encountering engaging and rewarding endeavors within its community. Well done!

My phone said this sounded more professional but I kind of hate it.

I still remember how quickly this spread and people made their own versions, right about the same time as Twitch Plays Pokemon came out! I'm glad it's had such a positive impact both globally among your players and to your career. Praise helix!

What do you say to people when they accuse you of ripping off "Threes"? Is it true?

So nice! I remember playing it back in the day, and then forking your repo to make it 128 instead of 2048.

Turns out the fork is still up. It's been literally 10 years.

https://128.arthurhess.com

It seems like there's a little pay to win even in a simple game like 2048 nowadays :)

I remember seeing it back then, and playing it for quite awhile. Great game, thank you!

The original 2048 was pretty cool, but damn, this improved version is just insultingly easy... and with a freemium option of course. I guess it captures the spirit of our times pretty well, though.

This is surreal reading that this was 10 years ago - I'm sure we came across eachother on Facepunch back in the day and I remember all of the amusing threads. Congrats on this landmark.

I tried it and it is very nice, but I completely ignored the extra features :)

My brain is just too hardwired to use cursor keys and doesn’t even think to look outside the box and click the buttons with a mouse, I guess.

What's with the premium version that's free with Amazon Prime?

My favorite 2048 clone is 2048 4D https://huonw.github.io/2048-4D/

Still very fun!

I didn't notice anything different from how it was in my memory. That seems like a successful modernization :)

I didn't notice that there were power ups until reading your post.

Just downloaded the new classic version with ads and wanted to pass along a suggestion that Thor makes.

While I understand that you’ve gotta make a living, ads are far more palatable if the user can consent to them.

And the way to make the user a part of the process is to offer a trade for the ad, rather than obtrusively running them.

“Would you like 500 gold to watch an ad?”

Yes? Ad for in-game currency that provides powerups? That’s a great deal and it’s win/win.

No? Okay, no ad, but no power up.

Statistically, you almost always get a yes, but the players are 100x happier than the slimey games that force ads in unscrupulous ways.

Im curious on the real cost of the impact of this game had on big co. I remember everybody was playing non stop at work.

I have to ask, did the game make you rich?

Thank you for the entertainment 2048 gave me years ago, hope your new version has the reach you want!

I used to play this in high school. Great work you did. And I hope things turn out well for you.

2048 is fantastic, and going full time on your project is a huge milestone. Congrats!

I play it evertime when I watch a tv show. I played it probably 10 thousands time.

I spent so many hours on this back in Campus, thank you for building 2048

How did you do animations for the menus and stuff?

Question: why does it start at 2 instead of at 1?

2048 is a brilliant game, I love it. I understand that it's been used widely (I even saw it on a plane IFE system last month) and that likely didn't generate much ot any income, but the first impression when opening this was a bit dodgy. There are over 700 'partners' you want me to consent to sending data to? Come on, you know that nobody could make an informed decision on that.

I'm sorry, but that ad placement is really obnoxious. Blocking these cool, new power ups after someone is halfway into a game comes off as a dark pattern, whether it's intentional or not.

Meh, wake me up when you release 16384. Just kidding, glad this can be a full time venture for you. Mixed feelings about this orbiting back into my field of view again. So far, having fun.

> 2048 is now my full-time focus

How? How does that game pay anywhere nearly enough to allow that?

Just another scam Internet surveillance.

Why do you need to share tracking data with many hundreds of shady organisations.

Store and/or access information on a device ( 723 partners included )

Consent + Develop and improve services ( 379 partners included )

Legitimate Interest Consent + Use limited data to select content ( 101 partners included )

Legitimate Interest Consent + Use limited data to select advertising ( 472 partners included )

Legitimate Interest Consent + Create profiles for personalised advertising ( 529 partners included )

Use precise geolocation data ( 547 partners included )

Consent + Actively scan device characteristics for identification ( 551 partners included )

If this doesn't describe the modern internet I don't know what else does.

I'm disappointed in HN for stomping this person for the game that they made. They had no idea Threes existed, made this game as an experiment, and it went viral. Despite this, they still acknowledge Threes on their site.

But they post here and are dogpiled on by people saying they ripped off another game and should feel like a scumbag. That's wrong, let's be kind to each other instead of exhibiting rude behavior that discourages people from pursuing their projects because "it's a ripoff of xyz". This started as an experiment, and is now this person's full time career. Can we instead encourage others to follow?

We're not talking about a 1:1 ripoff, we're talking about a game whose gameplay is adjacent to another game. Is Call of Duty a rip-off of Medal of Honor because they're both WWII FPS games?

To add to the clone topic, 2048 was cloned from 1024, so any claims of being only inspired by Threes fall apart quickly. IMHO, the way you're trying to sell 2048 is revisionist history and just plain shit. You can't turn back time, and let the Threes creator have a moment to shine and profit from the design, but you can at least give credit where due, and not when 50 people call you out on it.