2048

2048 is a single-player puzzle video game created by Italian developer Gabriele Cirulli in 2014. The objective is to slide numbered tiles on a 4x4 grid to combine tiles with the same value, creating larger numbers by summing them. All tiles on the board are powers of two, and the typical target is to create a tile with the value 2048. The game continues after achieving that tile, enabling players to pursue higher scores.

Gameplay proceeds by swiping in one of four directions. When a move is made, all tiles slide as far as possible in that direction, and tiles with identical values merge into a tile with double the value when they collide. A merged tile cannot merge again during the same move. After each move, a new tile with a value of 2 or 4 appears in a random empty cell. The game ends when the grid is full and no adjacent tiles share the same value, preventing any further moves.

Cirulli released the game as a free web application, and it quickly went viral, spawning numerous ports and clones for mobile devices. The game is frequently cited in discussions of puzzle design, combinatorial optimization, and artificial intelligence due to its simple rules and emergent strategic depth.