The 10 Best 2048 Spin Off Games

These are my 10 favourite derivatives of the 2048 browser game. Some of them are upping the challenge, some of them are just meant for laughs.

If you don’t know this browser game, here’s a short intro post I wrote about it, and here’s my strategy guide on how to reach the 2048 tile. Or just go ahead and play the original 2048 right now!

Something going viral is basically a case study in creativity exploding online, especially as this game is open source! So lets look at the related games people have created based on Gabriele Cirulli’s original 2048.

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DOGE2048

DOGE2048 is a good example of the many meme-styled derivatives you’ll find.

They are mostly just reskins, which means the underlying game mechanic is the same. Despite this, I played this one to see what the next DOGE would look like.

• Click here to play DOGE2048
• Credit to Tiny Animals for this spin off.

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HN Plays 2048 aka Collaborative 2048

36 people were playing 2048 when I checked in. Based on a highscore of 15024, they were close to getting 2048, but didn’t make it.

• Click here to play HN Plays 2048.
• Credit to Grant Timmerman for this spin off.

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2048 Multiplayer

Oh lord! I’m the one of the left.

Even though it’s called “multiplayer”, it’s actually just a 2-player version. You play against someone random, and the one who reaches 2048 first wins.

The person I was fighting was extremely fast. Fast to the point of perhaps being AI controlled. I clumsily kept going expecting to be beaten very soon, however, McSpeedy Pants locked him/her/itself up and I ended up winning with the score of 920.

• Click here to play 2048 Multiplayer.
• Credit to Emil Stolarsky for this spin off.

Click below to see the remaining seven games.

144

This one only spawns 1’s and you win when you reach the 144 tile. Unlike the original, this one will add all numbers of the same type fx: 1+1+1=3 and 2+2+2=6.

It’s a a lot more tricky. It’s hard to avoid getting a lot of smaller numbers, which can easily crowd your board, but the designer made up for it by enlarging it to 5×5 instead of 4×4.

I found this one both challenging and enjoyable! But I do not expect to win it – ever!. Instead I worked to increase my highscore as much as possible. Right now it is 449.

• Click here to play 144.
• Credit to Joe Zeng for this spin off.

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Flappy 2048

Flappy Bird has now become Flappy 2048.

Good luck on reaching number 2048!

• Click here to play Flappy 2048.
• Credit to hcz. for this spin off.

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2048 – 3D

At the bottom it says: “Use your arrow keys and Q, E to move the tiles.”

The board consists of three 3×3 boards. At each move, a 2 or a 4 will spawn in one of the three boards. All of them move the same way when you press the arrow keys, but limited to their own 3×3 area. If you press ‘Q’, the tiles will switch to the left. If you press ‘E’, they move right.

This was quite challenging, and almost overwhelming at the beginning. I had to spend some time figuring out how exactly the switching worked, yet I quite liked this one!

• Click here to play 2048 – 3D
• Credit to Michal Opler for this spin off.

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2048-tetris

Of all the derivatives here, I spent the most time on this one. You can merge blocks downwards and sideways – but be quick, the block will eventually freeze. As you can see from my screenshot above, I wasn’t swift enough to merge sideways along the bottom.

• Click here to play 2048-tetris!
• Credit to Prateek Agarwal for this spin off.

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Numberwang

This one looks crazy! Random numbers appear and the laws of math seem to be out of the window.

Don’t be fooled, this version is also just a reskin, the mechanics are the same as the original. Going by the colors of the tiles, you can play this one as if it was the original.

But if you want someone to think you are a genius, you can play this while they watch and act as if everything makes perfect sense to you, especially whenever the game goes “That’s Numberwang!”. This will work the best if the spectator has not heard of 2048.

• Click here to play Numberwang.
• Credit to Lou Huang for this spin off.

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4

You are probably not going to spend much time playing this one, and you are probably not going to get a higher score than 68.

• Click here to play 4
• Credit to Edwin Zhang for this spin off.

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2048 with AI

“Yoy win”, you mean, the AI win.

This is 2048 with AI (Artificial Intelligence). You can get a hint or let the AI play the game itself. I let it run on its own, secretly hoping it would fail. It won … very convincingly.

• Click here to play 2048 with AI (or without, if you please).
• Credit to Matt Overlan for 2048 with AI.

Finally, if you’re getting frustrated with not having reached 2048 yet, this last bonus version will help you out: Enjoy your win!

These have mostly been found via Gabriele Cirulli’s twitter feed . For even more 2048 derivatives, visit http://get2048.com/.