Basics of the 2048 Power Compendium

The 2048 Power Compendium is a collection of 75 different variations of the game 2048. You've probably already played, or at least heard of, 2048, but if you haven't, here's a summary:

A game of the original 2048 in the 2048 Power Compendium

2048 is a game that's played on a 4x4 grid of tiles. On each move, you choose one of the four orthogonal directions, and all the tiles slide in that direction until they hit another tile or the edge of the grid. The tiles are solid to each other, but if two tiles of the same number collide, they merge into a single tile with twice the number: two 1s merge into a 2, two 2s merge into a 4, two 4s merge into an 8, and so on. After each move, a new tile spawns. The game continues until the grid is full and no more merges can occur, at which point you're out of moves and the game is over. You win by reaching the 2048 (2¹¹) tile, but if you're good enough at the game, it's possible to get even higher tiles.

A game of 2187, which uses powers of 3 instead of powers of 2

There are many 2048 variants out there on the internet - what makes the 2048 Power Compendium special is that it's a collection of a bunch of variants, and while a few of the variants originated elsewhere, most of them are unique to the 2048 Power Compendium. When you first open the 2048 Power Compendium, you're looking at the menu screen, which contains the first 25 modes. Click on one of the tiles on the grid there to go to a screen that explains what that mode is. On that screen, you can change the dimensions of the grid, then you can begin a game in that variant by clicking the "Start Game" button. Each mode has different merging rules - the later modes tend to be more complicated than the earlier ones, so it's recommended that (at least for the main modes) you start at the top-left and work your way across the different modes from left to right, top to bottom (like how you read words on a page).

Note that there are a few differences between the 2048 Power Compendium and other 2048 variants. Unlike most 2048 versions, the 2048 Power Compendium does not have an automatic game over check, but if you try to move in a direction and nothing happens, that direction goes black until the next successful move, and it's game over once all directions have failed. The 2048 Power Compendium supports arrow key controls, WASD controls, and clicking the direction buttons to move, but unlike other 2048 versions, swiping the screen is not supported. If you feel that the movement animation is too fast or too slow, then click "Go to Modifiers" on the menu and change the animation speed there (It's recommended that you don't alter any of the other modifiers other than Animation Speed Multiplier until you've played a few games and gotten used to the various modes). Progress isn't automatically saved, but you can save your progress yourself by clicking "Get save code" in the middle of a game and copying the code there, then clicking "Resume From Save Code" on the menu and pasting that save code there when you want to resume the game.

If you have any other questions, then read on. Otherwise, click "Return to menu" and enjoy the 2048 Power Compendium!

Modes

The first 25 modes of the 2048 Power Compendium

Each mode of the 2048 Power Compendium is a 2048 variant with different merge rules, and different tiles that arise from these merge rules. Most of the modes are based on powers of a certain number: 2048 uses powers of 2, 2187 uses powers of 3, 1024 uses powers of 4, and so on. A few modes use powers of a certain number offset somehow, such as 2047 (powers of 2, minus 1) and 2059 (powers of 3, minus powers of 2). 5040 and XXXX are special, as both of them combine previous modes or powers somehow. Unlike 2048, most modes have "intermediate" tiles: for example, in 2187, there's a tile for each power of three, but also for double each power of three, which means the possible tiles are 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18, 27, 54, 81, 162, 243, and so on. Each mode has a default grid size, but feel free to play on a differently-sized grid (by clicking the plus and minus buttons next to the grid width and height on the gamemode explanation screen) if you find the default grid size for that mode too hard or too easy.

Once you've played some of the regular modes and have a handle on the differences between each mode, you can click the "Switch Pages" button on the menu. This lets you switch between the three pages of modes, each of which has 25 modes, for a total of 75. The latter 50 modes are considered to not be "main modes" for different reasons: some of them aren't related to powers of numbers (Powers of numbers is the core theme of the 2048 Power Compendium, so almost all of the main modes are based on them), some of them are alternate versions of main modes, some of them use weird gimmicks, and a few of them are open-ended modes without a single defined progression. Also, a few of the modes have modifiers, some of which are changed by clicking plus/minus buttons, some of which are changed by clicking "Switch this Modifier" buttons, and some of which are changed by entering their new value into the provided textbox.

Not all of the 2048 Power Compendium modes will be equally fun - try out various modes and find your favorites!

Modifiers

If the 75 modes on their own aren't enough for you, then click "Go to Modifiers" on the menu to access a bunch of different modifiers you can change. These modifiers affect EVERY mode (for the most part), and they allow a pretty good degree of customization. The Modifiers selection screens are split up into six pages - to switch between them, click the blue and orange arrows. With the exception of the Animation Speed Multiplier modifier (which is just aesthetic, and you're encouraged to change this to whatever value you like the best), all of these modifiers alter the gameplay, so it's recommended you don't start changing the modifiers until you're comfortable with the variants themselves. Games resumed from save codes retain their old settings regardless of what the current modifiers are set to, except for Animation Speed Multiplier, which is always based on its current settings and is not saved by save codes.

The first page of the Modifiers screens

The first page contains modifiers with numeric values - most of these are changed via the plus and minus buttons, while Animation Speed Multiplier is changed by typing a new value into its textbox (1 is default speed, higher numbers are faster, lower numbers are slower... except for 0, which means there's no animation and moves are instant). When it comes to the "Randomly-Placed" modifiers, "holes" are, well, holes in the grid (which effectively act as walls), "block tiles" are tiles that move with the others but can't merge with anything (even themselves), and "slippery tiles" are spaces on the grid that tiles will slide right over (as if the slippery tile isn't there).

The second page of the Modifiers screens

The remaining pages have modifiers that are changed by clicking their respective "Switch this Modifier" buttons. The second page has modifiers that change some more basic elements of the gameplay, the third page has modifiers that alter the grid and movement directions, the fourth and fifth pages are where the most game-changing modifiers are found, and the sixth page lets you add moves that trigger automatically. If you decide to enable either of the fourth page modifiers, you should probably play on a larger grid than you otherwise would! Some modes have special interactions with a couple modifiers, with Negative Tiles in particular having the most special interactions.

Custom Grid

I wonder what that "Activate Custom Grid" button does?

Page 3, by default, only offers a few options for the shape of the grid: square, diamond, checkerboard, hexagonal, triangular (made of hexagons), and 3D/4D... but if you want to customize it further, you can click the "Activate Custom Grid" button. Doing so enables you to fully customize the grid by turning page 3 into two pages: one to customize the grid, one to customize the movement directions.

Ah, so that's what it does!

The grid customizer is the easier of the two custom grid screens to use: you can change the dimensions of the grid, you can switch the grid between square tiles and hexagonal tiles, and you can click on any tile to switch what it starts as: a regular empty tile, a hole in the grid, a box tile, or a slippery tile. You can't make any tile start as a number tile, though, since different modes have different tiles and the custom grid applies to every mode.

The directions customization screen, with the up arrow button selected.

On the directions customization screen, you can alter the direction buttons freely. To alter a specific button, click on that button. Once a button is selected, you can fill in the textboxes to change its attributes. When it comes to movement magnitudes, -1 vertical is up, +1 vertical is down, -1 horizontal is left, +1 horizontal is right, +1 vertical and +1 horizontal is southeast, and so on. +2 vertical is downwards movement that skips every other tile, so tiles jump directly from their current space to the space two tiles below them (These directions are different on a hexagonal grid). The five modifiers with "(%)" next to them are measured in percentage of the arrows box, where 100% is the entire box. To change which keys on the keyboard correspond to each direction, click the "Remove Last Key" and "Add New Key" buttons; the former removes the last keyboard key in the list for that direction. The "Add New Key" button, when clicked, becomes "Listening...", indicating that you should press a key on the keyboard; if the key you clicked isn't already assigned to a direction, then it will be added to the currently selected direction. The "Remove This Direction" button does what it says it does. To un-select a direction, click the direction that's already selected; if there's no direction selected, then you can click the "Add This Direction" button to add a new direction.

Custom Mode

The screen you see before starting the Custom Game process

The 2048 Power Compendium has quite a few modes already, but what if you have an idea for a mode that isn't already in the game? That's what the Custom Game is for! Going through the process of creating a Custom Mode will let you create your own mode that can be played in the 2048 Power Compendium, including a save code you can use to share the mode with others if you wish. In the process of creating a Custom Mode, you'll decide what tiles can spawn, what the allowed merges are, how the tiles are colored, the color of the background elements, and more. Modifiers will work on Custom Modes just as well as they'd work on any other mode, too.

The Custom Mode has its own Guide, so this Guide won't go into detail about it. Clicking the "Make a Custom Mode" button will take you to a screen where you can choose to create a new mode, load a Custom Mode save code you already have and re-edit it, or view the Guide for the Custom Game. As with this Guide, it's recommended you read the Custom Mode Guide before making your first Custom Mode.

Credits

2048 was created by Gabriele Cirulli, and the official version can be found here. However, those who are familiar with 2048 probably already know that the true origin of the concept comes from Threes!, which is a premium mobile game with a free web version here; the 2048 Power Compendium's 3072 is based on Threes!. As for the other modes and modifiers in the 2048 Power Compendium that originated elsewhere:

• I can't seem to find the origin of 2187 (powers of 3), but it definitely existed before I added it to the 2048 Power Compendium.
• 3125 (powers of 5) comes from this Scratch project, which was also made by me, years before I made the 2048 Power Compendium.
• 1000 (powers of 10) is basically 20 Euros, a currency-merging 2048 variant.
• XXXX, specifically its behavior when the minimum and maximum merge length are equal, is inspired by 243.
• 2584 (Fibonacci numbers) shows up in dozens of alternate 2048 apps, though I don't know where it originated from.
• Isotopic 256 comes from here.
• Wildcard 2048 was inspired by Quantum 2048, but it's simpler than Quantum 2048 because I still don't quite understand the exact rules of how quantum tiles in that game merge.
• DIVE comes from here.
• Holes in the grid and box tiles are inspired by an old Android app called 2048 Sandbox, which has since been removed from Google Play.
• A hexagonal grid version of 2048 exists in several places. The 3D/4D grid modifier is based on 2048 4D.
• The non-interacting version of negative tiles comes from -512, while the interacting version comes from ±64.
• Automatic moves were inspired by the gravity special mode from 2147483648.

• The following modes and modifiers were suggested by Michael Darrow: Tricolor Tiles, the "chance of occurring" automatic moves property, Partial Absorb 361, 3,188,646, 3026, the "1+1+1=1.5+1.5" variant of 2216.838, the "1+0.5=1.5" mode modifier in the Partial Absorb variant of 2216.838, the "merge number changes based on merges instead of turns" Turatin mode modifier, the "tiles can merge with the previous negative tile" 2584 mode modifier, and some elements of the structure of the Custom Mode maker.
• 16+16i was suggested by Toni Brown.

Changelog

• v1.0 (Aug. 15, 2023): Release version of the 2048 Power Compendium. Includes 25 main modes, 16 extra modes, four pages of modifiers, and custom grid and directions in the modifiers.


• v1.0.1 (Aug. 22, 2023): Fixed the coloring in 180, which technically worked but wasn't quite how I wanted it.


• v1.0.2 (Aug. 23, 2023): Fixed Wildcard 2048 (Melting Pot Mode), which previously wasn't working without Negative Tiles.


• v1.1 (Sep. 26, 2023): Added 4 new extra modes (Bicolor 2584, 1321, mod 27, and Directional Merges), added a mode modifier to 3125 that disables 3 + 1 merges, reworked 2216.838 (the old version is still available via a mode modifier) added a fifth page of modifiers (contains same-direction merge requirement and automatic moves), Maximum Spaces per Move can now be configured separately for different directions on the Custom Grid, and custom direction buttons can have different widths and heights. Also fixed a few bugs and made a bunch of internal changes (which means save codes are longer now, though old save codes will still work).


• v1.2 (Oct. 28, 2023): Added 5 new extra modes (2378, 1093 1094, 2310, 378, and DIVE), added a mode modifier to 180 that changes the possible merge lengths, and fixed a bug that was preventing mod 27 from working on custom grids.


• v1.2.1 (Apr. 26, 2024): Added a modifier to DIVE that lets you change how the seeds are checked, added a modifier to Wildcard 2048 that makes all spawns be combination tiles, and fixed a couple bugs.


• v1.3 (May 23, 2024): Added 11 new extra modes (2131, 2583, 1365 1366, 10, 3888, 2000, 3645, 2700, 1825, 2295, and 3069), added a mode modifier to 1321 that makes +1s only merge with even tiles, added a "random goals" mode modifier to 1321 and DIVE (1825 and 3069 also have this modifier), added a "restart game" button, and fixed the bug where pressing enter on a textbox would reload the page.


• v1.3.1 (Jun. 30, 2024): Fixed a couple typos, including 1024's spawning tiles being listed incorrectly.


• v1.3.2 (Jul. 5, 2024): Fixed a typo with 3645's title.


• v1.3.3 (Jul. 9, 2024): Fixed a typo with 2197's rules description.


• v1.4 (Jul. 14, 2024): Made the hexagonal grid actually look hexagonal, added "triangle made of hexagons" as a grid option, added the ability to switch between square and hexagonal tiles to the Custom Grid, added a new Page 5 of modifiers (automatic moves are now on page 6. Page 5 contains Tricolor Tiles and temporary holes), added slippery tiles to the Custom Grid and gave them a "randomly-placed" modifier, added parameters to Negative Tiles that let you change the spawn ratio between the two signs, added a modifier that hides the numbers on the tiles, made 2295's behavior with Interacting Negative Tiles more interesting, and added "Multitile 2048" as an option for one of the mode modifiers in Wildcard 2048.


• v1.4.1 (Jul. 14, 2024): Fixed the inner tiles for large tiles in DIVE on hexagonal grids.


• v1.4.2 (Jul. 15, 2024): Fixed Tricolored Tiles's behavor on 1535 1536 1537.


• v1.4.3 (Aug. 18, 2024): Fixed a bug that caused X^Y and 378 to crash upon moving in a vertical direction.


• v1.5 (Sep. 9, 2024): Split the extra modes into two pages, so there are now three pages of modes: Page 1 is the main modes, Page 2 is the normal-ish extra modes, and Page 3 is the more wacky extra modes. Added 6 new Page 2 modes (Harder 3375, Interleaved 3125, Interleaved 3375, Interleaved 5832, 1762, and 2205) and 8 new Page 3 modes (3026, 3,188,646, 16+16i, (232, 240), Partial Absorb 361, SQUART, 3307, and Turatin). Added the random goals modifier to 180, 3888, 2000, 3645, and 2592 (1762, 3026, and SQUART also have the random goals modifier), and gave every mode with random goals another modifier that controls the size of the first random goal. Fixed some bugs with box tiles.


• v1.5.1 (Oct. 10, 2024): Added a mode modifier to 2216.838's Partial Absorb variant that lets you enable/disable 1+0.5=1.5, added a mode modifier to 3,166,838 that makes it so the multiplication tile doesn't have to be in the middle of the merge, added a mode modifier to Turatin that changes what causes the merge number to increment, added a modifier to 2584 when Negative Tiles is Interacting that lets tiles merge with the previous negative tile, fixed X^Y's lag and reduced (232, 240)'s lag, and a couple bug fixes.


• v1.5.2 (Oct. 10, 2024): Fixed v1.5.1's breaking of save codes, and fixed a couple typos.


• v1.5.3 (Oct. 29, 2024): Fixed a bug that prevented the Horizontal Movement Magnitude of custom grid movement directions from being changed.


• v1.5.4 (Nov. 1, 2024): Fixed Negative Tiles on 3072.


• v1.5.5 (Nov. 22, 2024): Added an on-screen indicator of when a game was resumed from a save code.


• v1.5.6 (Dec. 7, 2024): Fixed graphical bugs with the checkerboard grid option, and with Negative Tiles in (232, 240).


• v2.0 (Dec. 9, 2024): Added the Custom Mode maker, which lets you create your own modes in the style of the Page 1 modes or the modes from the first three rows of Page 2. (Also, fixed a bug where Visible Next Tiles would carry over on mode restarts/replays)


• v2.0.1 (Dec. 10, 2024): Fixed the following Custom Mode bugs: Noninteger spawn chances not working, custom background gradients not allowing different entries, and conic gradients not working. Also, fixed the menu UI a bit for certain screen sizes.


• v2.0.2 (Dec. 10, 2024): Fixed a bug with Custom Mode background gradient direction, and a couple bugs with length-1 Custom Mode merges (among these changes, length-1 Custom Mode merges no longer give score).


• v2.0.3 (Dec. 10, 2024): Fixed a bug with SQUART's random goals.


• v2.0.4 (Dec. 11, 2024): Fixed a bug where certain Custom Modes would have merges resulting in incorrect tiles.


• v2.0.5 (Dec. 13, 2024): Fixed scoring on merges between negative tiles in Turatin (Extra Fluid). Merges with negative results in Custom Modes now also give positive score, for consistency with the rest of the Compendium.


• v2.0.6 (Dec. 21, 2024): Fixed a couple bugs with gradients in Custom Modes.


• v2.0.7 (Dec. 30, 2024): Fixed a couple bugs involving removing all merges in a Custom Mode.


• v2.0.8 (Dec. 30, 2024): Fixed a bug with the Custom Mode consistency check on no-output merges.


• v2.0.9 (Jan. 9, 2024) [Current Version]: Fixed couple bugs with Interacting Negatives 3,188,646.

Intro to the Custom Game

The 2048 Power Compendium has quite a few modes already, but what if you have an idea for a mode that isn't already in the game? That's what the Custom Game is for! Going through the process of creating a Custom Mode will let you create your own mode that can be played in the 2048 Power Compendium, including a save code you can use to share the mode with others if you wish. In the process of creating a Custom Mode, you'll decide what tiles can spawn, what the allowed merges are, how the tiles are colored, the color of the background elements, and more. Modifiers will work on Custom Modes just as well as they'd work on any other mode, too.

The Custom Mode is designed to allow for the creation of modes where the progression of tiles follows a single cyclic path. This mainly refers to modes in the style of the modes on Page 1, but also includes the first three rows of Page 2. All of these modes can be recreated in the Custom Game, but modes beyond that point are generally beyond what the Custom Game can be used to create. When creating a Custom Mode, each tile has a numeric index: for example, in a 2048 recreation, 1 would be Tile #1, 2 would be Tile #2, 4 would be Tile #3, 8 would be Tile #4, 16 would be Tile #5, 32 would be Tile #6, and so on. It is these index numbers that you have to work with when deciding merges and tile color schemes.

Alright, let's get into explaining each step of the process of creating a Custom Mode.

Spawning Tiles

A replication of 2048's spawning tiles

The first step to making a Custom Mode is deciding what tiles can spawn, and how likely each one is to spawn. For each index starting from 1, you get to choose what the number on that tile is and how likely it is to spawn. Use the "Add a New Spawning Tile" button to add higher indices to the list. A tile's spawn chance determines how likely it is to spawn: a spawning tile with spawn chance 2 is twice as likely to spawn as a spawning tile with spawn chance 1. If, for example, you want Tiles #2 and #3 to spawn but not Tile #1, then just set Tile #1's spawn chance to 0 - if a tile's spawn chance is 0, that tile can't spawn anyway so its value in the list of spawning tiles is ignored. The values of the spawned tiles must be whole numbers, but the values don't have to be positive - tiles whose values are 0 or negative are allowed, though if there are any negative spawning tiles then the Negative Tiles modifier won't work on that Custom Mode since it already has negative tiles.

Normally, tiles spawn with random chance, like in most modes. If you instead want spawning to work the way it does in modes like 1535 1536 1537, where there's a "box" that spawning tiles are pulled from (to ensure a more even spread of spawning tiles), the "Each tile has a random chance to spawn" button can be clicked to change it into (or back from) the box behavior. When the spawning tiles are in box behavior, the spawn chance is replaced with the amount of that tile in the box.

Merges

A replication of 2187's merges

The merges are the most important part of making a Custom Mode. Each merge has a few properties to it: which tile indices the merge can apply to, what the input tiles of the merge are, whether the merge must be ordered, and what the output tile of the merge is. What a merge does with the indices is up to you to decide, but what it does to the tiles' visible numbers is not: the numbers of tiles in a merge are always added, so if a 4 tile and a 5 tile merge, they'll always merge into a 9 tile, regardless of what those tiles indices are internally.

There are two options for deciding how to restrict a merge to certain indices (you can switch between these two forms via the "Change Form" button): either you can outright specify specific indices it works for, or you can make it based on a minimum, maximum, and modulo structure: for example, if the rule is 1 ≤ n ≤ 30 and n = 2 mod 3, then n must be 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, or 29, i.e. n must be between 1 and 30 and it must be 2 more than a multiple of 3. If you wish for there to be no maximum, leave the maximum box blank (this sets the maximum to Infinity). Note that if you try to enter, say, 5 mod 2, it will automatically be set to the equivalent 1 mod 2, so when editing these boxes you should probably edit the second modulus box before the first one. When specifying specific indices, enter a number into the blank textbox at the end of the list to add a new allowed index, make a textbox blank to remove that allowed index and all of the ones after it.

Merges can be as long or short as you want them to be. One of the tiles in the merge will always be "Tile n", where n is one of the allowed indices for that merge, and you set the other input tiles relative to that one. Input tiles are typically n plus or minus some number, but you can use the "Change Form" button below each input tile to switch it between n + c form and just c, where c is a number. This, for example, lets you make a merge where regardless of what n is, one of the tiles in the merge is a 1 (for 2047-style modes). The output tile also takes such a form.

A merge cannot have more than one output tile, but it can have no output tiles (if you want to make a merge where the colliding tiles are just destroyed). If a merge only has the single "Tile n" input tile, then it becomes more of an "effect" than a merge, an effect that applies to any valid tile at the end of each move (like the decaying in Isotopic 256). If multiple merge rules could apply at once, the merges earlier in the order of merges apply: for example, if you have a mode where both 1+1 and 1+1+1 are valid merges, then you need to put the 1+1+1 merge earlier in the Custom Mode's merge order, otherwise the 1+1 merge will take priority.

If you click the "The input tiles can be in any order" box, it changes to "The input tiles must be in the right order", which means that merge only occurs if the input tiles line up correctly: the first "Tile n" must be the tile colliding into the rest of the line, and so forth from there, with the last input tile being at the end of the line. This can be used to recreate the Bicolor modes, among other things.

Consistency Check

The result of running the consistency check on a 1296 recreation

Aside from the spawning tiles, you don't directly decide what the numbers on the tiles are: the numbers arise naturally as a consequence of the spawning tiles and the merges you choose. The consistency check is a chance for you to confirm that the numbers are doing what you designed the mode to do, i.e. that your mode is working as intended. Pressing "Run the check" will run some code that examines the mode to figure out what the first few tiles' numbers are, and then once you've done the check you can click "View Generated Tiles" to see what the tiles' numbers will be.

The check might come across an "inconsistency" and stop early: this means that, within the merge rules you've set up, it's possible for a tile with the same index to have multiple values, such as if Tile #5 was creatable as both a 6+2 merge and as a 3+9 merge (meaning Tile #5 could be an 8 tile or a 12 tile). This usually isn't something you'd want to have, since a tile's behavior in a Custom Mode is determined only by its index, not by its value. That being said, if you want this behavior, the Custom Mode process won't stop you.

Tile Colors

An example of a color rule

Choosing the colors of tiles is often the hardest part, or at least the longest part, of creating a Custom Mode. Color rules have the same possible restrictions as merges in terms of what tiles they apply to: you can either specify which tiles they apply to directly, or follow a minimum, maximum, modulo rule. As with merges, if multiple color rules could apply to a single tile, the earliest one in the order applies first. Color rules can take a while to set up, so unlike with merges (where the "Add a Merge" button adds a new default merge to the end of the list), the "Add a Color Rule" button adds a duplicate of the color rule you're currently looking at to the end of the color rule list.

For each color in the background of a tile, you get to choose its color via one of the three typical computer color systems: RGB, HSL, or HSV. HSL is used by default, but you can use the "Change Color System" button to switch to one of the other two. The box next to the "Change Color System" button is not clickable: it's a visual aid that shows you the color you currently have selected. The text box next to that lets you enter a hex code for a color, if you'd rather do that than set each of the three aspects separately. The color you choose for a given color rule is technically only the starting color for that rule (where you can choose the start point via the "At Tile #" box), as below the part where you choose the starting color, you can choose how the color varies as the index increases. For each aspect of the color, you can choose whether that aspect linearly increases, or gets exponentially closer to (or further away from) a particular value.

The background of a tile doesn't have to be a single color - it can be a gradient. Use the "Add a Gradient Entry" button to add another color to the gradient. Once a tile's background has more than one color, some additional properties become relevant. The Gradient Position box lets you adjust the order and positioning of each color in the gradient. Gradients come in three types: Linear (the gradient goes from up to down by default. This can be changed via the Gradient Direction box), Radial (the gradient goes from center to outside), and Conic (the gradient starts at the top and loops around in a circular path. The starting angle can be changed). Linear and Radial gradient positions work in percentage (out of 100), but Conic gradient positions work in degrees (out of 360).

The text color of the tile is also part of a color rule. The text can only be one color, not a gradient, but unlike the background, its transparency can be changed: α = 1 is fully opaque, α = 0 is invisible, and anything in between is partially transparent.

Background

The background color for a 2048 recreation

This screen of the Custom Mode lets you change the colors of five things: the background of the mode while you're playing it, the background of the "mode select" screen for the mode (the screen that lets you change the grid size and such), the color of empty spaces on the grid, the color of the back of the grid (the space between the empty spaces), and the color of the text within the mode (the rules text and such). These colors are chosen in the same way as the tile colors are. The two backgrounds can be gradients, but the empty spaces, grid back, and text color can only be single colors.

Other Stuff

The last Custom Mode screen for a 3125 recreation

The final screen of the Custom Game has a few assorted items that didn't fit anywhere else.

First of all, this is where you decide which tile(s) you need to make to win the mode. These are decided by index, and you can decide how many "winning tile candidates" there are and how many of them you need to discover in order to win. If the Amount Required to Win is N/A, then the mode cannot be won. There's also options for Losing Tiles: if you discover enough of these to hit the Amount Required to Lose, it's game over even if the board hasn't filled up yet. A typical 2048 Power Compendium mode doesn't use this mechanic, but I figured I'd throw it in.

This screen is where you decide the rules text of the mode. This isn't automatically generated - you have to specify it yourself. The first box is where the "heading" of the mode would go if it has one (like "Powers of 4" for 1024), the second box is for the title of the mode, and the third box is for the description of the mode. You do not get to make the text that describes the spawning tiles; that text is automatically generated.

By default, the default size of the grid for a Custom Mode is 2 more than the length of the longest merge in the mode, but you can change that default here if you wish. To accomodate for different grid shapes from the Modifiers, the default grid size must be a square - you can't set the default length and width separately. Of course, as with regular modes, the default grid size is just that: a default, which the player of the mode can still stray away from.

Custom Mode Save Codes

The screen you see upon completion of a Custom Mode

Upon finishing the creation of a Custom Mode, you're given a save code for that mode. You should copy this code and save it somewhere. Later, you can paste this code into the "Resume from Save Code" screen from the main menu to jump into playing that Custom Mode without having to recreate the whole mode, and (by nature of being a string of text) you can share the save code with others if you wish. You can also paste a Custom Mode save code into the screen reached from the "Load from a Save Code" button on the Custom Mode's beginning screen if you wish to edit that Custom Mode.

Examples of Custom Modes

To help you get familiar with the Custom Game process, here are some recreations of existing modes within the Custom Game. Click one of these boxes to show its save code, and load these save codes to get a sense of what a finished Custom Mode looks like.

...and, to show off what the Custom Modes can do, here's some new modes that I felt were good enough to make but not quite unique enough to add to the Compendium more properly.