Play Chinese 2048 online

About this game

2048 is often played on a plain 4×4 grid, with numbered tiles that slide when a player moves them using the four arrow keys. Every turn, a new tile randomly appears in an empty spot on the board with a value of either 2 or 4. Tiles slide as far as possible in the chosen direction until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid. If two tiles of the same number collide while moving, they will merge into a tile with the total value of the two tiles that collided. The resulting tile cannot merge with another tile again in the same move. Higher-scoring tiles emit a soft glow, and the highest possible tile is 131,072. If a move causes three consecutive tiles of the same value to slide together, only the two tiles farthest along the direction of motion will combine. If all four spaces in a row or column are filled with tiles of the same value, a move parallel to that row/column will combine the first two and last two. A scoreboard on the upper-right keeps track of the user's score. The user's score starts at zero and is increased whenever two tiles combine, by the value of the new tile. The game is won when a tile with a value of 2048 appears on the board, hence the name of the game. After reaching the 2048 tile, players can continue to play (beyond the 2048 tile) to reach higher scores. When the player has no legal moves (there are no empty spaces and no adjacent tiles with the same value), the game ends.

How to play

On a computer, most games in this category use the arrow keys or WASD to move, the mouse to aim or select, and space or enter to confirm and act. On a phone or tablet, tap and swipe directly on the game area. If Chinese 2048 uses its own control scheme, it will show you on the title screen or in its in-game help.

Use the Fullscreen button above the description to expand the game to the whole screen — worth doing on smaller displays, and it removes everything else from view so you can concentrate.

Tips for a better run

• Give the game a few seconds to finish loading before you start pressing keys — early input can be dropped.
• Close heavy background tabs if the frame rate feels sluggish; browser games share your machine's resources.
• On mobile, turn the device to landscape for games designed around a wide play area.
• Found a bug or a game that will not load? Use the Report button above and tell us what happened.

More like this

If you enjoyed Chinese 2048, the full Puzzles games collection has plenty more in the same vein, and the games below are the ones other players moved on to next.