Basics of the 2048 Power Compendium

The 2048 Power Compendium is a collection of 61 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 main 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 "Go to Extra Modes" button on the menu, which lets you select among the 36 extra modes. These modes are "extra" 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 61 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 five 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), while "block tiles" are tiles that move with the others but can't merge with anything, even themselves.

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, and the fourth and fifth pages are where the most game-changing modifiers are found. 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, 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, and you can click on any tile to switch what it starts as: a regular empty tile, a hole in the grid, or a box 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. 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.

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.

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).


• 1.2 (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.


• 1.2.1 (Apr. 26, 2024) [Current Version]: 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.


• 1.3 (May 23, 2024) [Current Version]: 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.