Number Merge

How to play

The number shown at the top is the next one you will drop. Tap a column and it falls to the bottom of that stack. If it lands directly on a matching number, the two combine into one of double the value, and your score rises by that value.

Merges cascade. If a merge creates an 8 that is now sitting on another 8, those combine too, and so on up the column. A well planned single drop can trigger four or five merges at once, which is where most of the score comes from.

The game ends when every column is full to the top.

• On a phone, tap the column you want.
• On a computer, click a column or press the number keys 1 to 5.

As your highest tile grows, the game starts offering 4s and then 8s as well as 2s, so the pieces keep pace with the board.

How to score well

Build a staircase in each column

The ideal column has its largest value at the bottom and decreases upward, so 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 reading up. This arrangement is perfectly primed: dropping a 2 on top sets off the entire chain, merging all the way down.

Building these deliberately is the single biggest difference between a low score and a high one. A random column of mixed values gives you one merge at a time. A staircase gives you five in one drop.

Never bury a number you need

Only the top number in a column is reachable. If you drop a 32 onto a column whose top is a 2, that 2 is now buried and can never merge with anything until the 32 above it goes, which requires another 32. Columns die this way, and they die quietly, several moves before you notice.

Before every drop, ask what it lands on and whether that is what you want sitting underneath.

Keep one column deliberately empty

An empty or nearly empty column is your escape valve. When the next number fits nowhere useful, you need somewhere to put it that does not spoil a good structure. Players who fill all five columns evenly have no options left the first time an awkward number arrives.

Merge upward, not sideways

Merges only happen vertically within a column, so two matching 16s in different columns are of no use to each other. Group values you want to combine into the same column, which means thinking about which column each number belongs to rather than simply which column has room.

Why chains matter so much

The score arithmetic makes this concrete. Merging two 2s into a 4 scores 4. But a chain that goes 2 and 2 into 4, then 4 and 4 into 8, then 8 and 8 into 16, then 16 and 16 into 32 scores 4 plus 8 plus 16 plus 32, which is 60 from a single drop.

Meanwhile the column has gone from five occupied cells down to one, which is space you desperately need. So a chain does two things at once: it scores several times more, and it clears the board. Everything about good play here is really about setting up chains rather than making individual merges.

How this differs from 2048

2048 and this game share the doubling mechanic and are otherwise almost opposites. In 2048 every move affects the entire board, and your problem is that space keeps shrinking. Here each drop affects one column, and your problem is choosing where things go.

That makes this the more forgiving of the two, because a bad drop damages one column rather than the whole board. It also makes it the more deliberate, since you can plan a specific column several moves ahead in a way 2048 never allows.

Your best score is stored in your browser on your own device and never uploaded.

Common questions