Why a seed?

The sliding merge game is one of the best puzzles on a phone. You slide the tiles, two 2s make a 4, two 4s make an 8, and you keep doubling all the way to 2048. The trouble is the numbers. For a kid, 256 is just a number.

So we swapped the numbers for a plant. Two seeds make a sprout. Two sprouts make a seedling. Keep going and you get a bud, a flower, a bush, a sapling and, eleven stages in, a fruit tree. A seed you watch grow is more fun to name than a number. The math is all still there. Each stage is worth twice the one before, so growing a Fruit Tree earns 2,048 points, the same as the tile the original game was named after.

A bit of real merge-game history

The sliding merge game took off in March 2014. Gabriele Cirulli, a 19-year-old Italian web developer, built a browser game called 2048 over a single weekend. He started it as an experiment, to see if he could program a game almost from scratch. He released it on March 9, 2014, with the code free for anyone to use, and it had more than 4 million visitors in less than a week.

Cirulli was open about where the idea came from. His project page says 2048 is based on 1024 by Veewo Studio and conceptually similar to Threes by Asher Vollmer. Threes came out for iOS on February 6, 2014, designed by Vollmer with art by Greg Wohlwend, after about 14 months of work. In Threes, a 1 and a 2 merge into a 3, two 3s make a 6, two 6s make a 12, and so on.

Because Cirulli shared his code, people made many versions of their own. Ours keeps his rules. Nine new tiles in ten are the smallest kind, and every merge adds the new tile’s value to your score. We just grow plants instead.

The growth chart

Each merge moves a plant one stage up. Here is the full chart, with the points each merge earns:

• Seed: where every plant starts. Most new tiles are seeds.
• Sprout: 4 points. Now and then a new tile drops in as a sprout.
• Seedling: 8 points.
• Leafy: 16 points.
• Bud: 32 points.
• Flower: 64 points.
• Bush: 128 points.
• Sapling: 256 points.
• Young Tree: 512 points.
• Tree: 1,024 points.
• Fruit Tree: 2,048 points. This is the goal.

Grow a Fruit Tree and you can keep going. After it come the Orchard, the Forest and a few more we’ll let you find. The chart under the board lights up each stage you’ve reached.

How to play

• Swipe on the board, drag with your mouse, or press the arrow keys or W, A, S and D. The arrow buttons under the board work too.
• Every plant slides as far as it can in that direction.
• Two matching plants that bump together grow into the next stage. A plant can only grow once per move.
• After each move, a new seed (or now and then a sprout) drops into an empty spot.
• Grow a Fruit Tree to win, then keep growing if you like. The game ends when the board is full and nothing can merge.
• The watering can undoes one move, once per game. Your best score and top stage save on this device.
• Sound is on to start. Tap 🔊 to mute, or 🎵 for music.

Tips from the garden

Pick a corner and stay there. Keep your biggest plant in one corner, say the bottom left. Then most of your moves should be down and left.

Keep that edge row full. When the bottom row is full, a slide to the right usually leaves your big plant where it is.

Move away from your corner last. Sliding up is how a good garden usually falls apart. Only do it when nothing else moves, and slide back down right after.

Save the watering can. It’s tempting to undo the first small slip. Hold it for the move that would have ended your game.

Your turn

Your first seed is waiting at the top of this page. Plant it, and see how far up the chart it can grow.