2048 Advance

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Overview

2048 Advance ports the sliding tile puzzle 2048, originally by Gabriele Cirulli, to the Game Boy Advance. It was made by Basil Termini for GBA Jam 2024 as the author's first GBA homebrew.

Slide the board in any of four directions and matching tiles merge into one worth their sum. Every merge adds to your score, a new tile appears after each move, and the game ends in a win when a 2048 tile appears or in a game over when no move is left.

Later updates added saving: press Start and the game will resume where you left off. They also brought multiboot support, a huge merge sound effect alongside reworked sound effects, and fixes to score tallying and the game over check.

Made by: Basil Termini
Released: 2024

Controls guide

Playing

Button and key	Action
D-pad`Arrows`	Slide every tile in that direction
Start`Enter`	Save the board; the game picks up from it next time
Select`Shift`	Throw away the board and start a new game

Title, game over and win screens

Button and key	Action
A`X`/B`Z`/Start`Enter`/Select`Shift`	Continue: from the title this resumes a saved board, after a win or game over it starts a new one

Cheatsheet

Rules

Board: 4 by 4
New tiles: A 2 nine times in ten, a 4 one time in ten
Merge score: The value of the new tile (two 8s merging score 8 + 8 = 16)
Win: Make a 2048 tile
Lose: No empty square and no two touching tiles alike
High score: Kept between sessions

Merge sounds

Up to 8: Small merge
16 to 64: Merge
128 and 256: Big merge, higher pitch for 256
512 and up: Huge merge

Tips

Pick a corner for your biggest tile and keep it there. Favour two directions (say Down and Left) and use a third only when nothing else moves, so the big tile never gets pushed out of its corner.
Keep the row along your corner full. If that row has a gap, a stray 2 can drop into it and wall your biggest tile in.
Build a descending chain away from the corner (1024, 512, 256 and so on) so each merge sets up the next one along the row.
Select starts a new game immediately and the old board is gone, so press it only when you mean it. Start saves without ending your game.
A slide that moves nothing is free: no new tile appears unless something actually shifted or merged, so you can safely test a direction that is blocked.
Holding a direction slides once on the press and once more about a third of a second later, then stops. Tap each move rather than holding the pad, or you may slide twice by accident.