2048 Reverse

Take everything you know about 2048 and flip it. New tiles arrive as giant 2048s and 1024s, merging two equal tiles cuts them in half instead of doubling them, and the goal is to shrink your way down to a single 2.

How to play 2048 Reverse

Slide the tiles with the arrow keys or W A S D, or swipe on the board. When two equal tiles collide they become one tile of half the value, so 2048 + 2048 makes a 1024 and 4 + 4 makes a 2. After every move a new tile appears: a 2048 nine times out of ten, a 1024 the rest of the time. Make a 2 to win. Undo takes back your last move.

Classic 2048 in a mirror

Every tile here has a twin in the original game: multiply a Reverse tile by its twin and you always get 4,096. A 2048 is the old 2, a 1024 is the old 4, and the winning 2 is the old 2048. Both games were run side by side on the same random numbers, and over 57,000 moves the boards never disagreed once. So the odds are exactly those of classic 2048, and a lucky 1024 spawn is worth two 2048 tiles.

What 3,000 games show

Don't expect an easy win. In 3,000 games of purely random swipes, none made a 2. They lasted about 113 moves and mostly ended with a 32 or 64 as the smallest tile. A bot that only sweeps down and left did better, lasting about 217 moves and ending mostly on 16 or 32, but it didn't win either.

Scoring is upside down too. The first merge of two 2048s earns 1,024 points, while the final merge into a 2 earns just 2, so even a random game scores around 70,000. Judge a run by its smallest tile, not its score.

Tips

• Flip your 2048 habits. Keep the smallest tile in a corner and let the numbers grow along the edge: 2, 4, 8, 16.
• Merge the giants early. Every spare 2048 takes up a cell, and only another 2048 can clear it.
• Be careful after a win. Two 2s merge into a 1, and a 1 can never merge again, so each one blocks a cell for good.

FAQs

The halve-instead-of-double concept is inspired by Reverse 2048 by Matthew Chung.