About
2048 is a single player puzzle game in which the player combines tiles on a grid with matching numbers in order to create a single tile with the value 2048.
Origin
On March 5th, 2014, developer Gabriele Cirulli published the game 2048 on his Github repository. To win the game, the player presses directional keys to add new tiles to the board and merge tiles of matching numerical values into a new tile of their combined value. To win the game, the player must form a tile with the number 2048.
Spread
On March 13th, 2014, co-founder of the citizen advocacy group LaQuadrature du Net posted a tweet linking to the game with a warning about its addictive nature.
DO NOT try http://t.co/G8psSBiNTH I repeat: DO NOT! #addictive#game
— Jérémie Zimmermann (@jerezim) March 13, 2014
In the coming days, several sites published articles about the game’s viral success, including The Daily Dot, The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times and City AM.