Ink 2048

Terminal 2048 built with Ink. Turn-based, no timer — slide the board, merge tiles, and chase the 2048 star. The board renders as a real square grid of chunky tiles, the freshly spawned tile is highlighted each turn, and you can resize the board (3×3 to 6×6) on the fly. Your best score persists between sessions, tracked per board size.

Install

Requires Node 20+.

The unscoped name ink-2048 is already taken on npm, so this package publishes as @terminalgames/ink-2048. The command is still ink-2048.

Run without installing (easiest)

npx @terminalgames/ink-2048

Global install

If npm install -g fails with EACCES, your npm global prefix is probably system-owned (/usr/local). Either use npx above, or point npm at a user-owned directory:

mkdir -p ~/.npm-global
npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.npm-global/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
npm install -g @terminalgames/ink-2048

Then:

ink-2048

Controls

The essential controls are always shown in the sidebar, so there's nothing to memorize on a first run.

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | h / ← | Slide left | | l / → | Slide right | | k / ↑ | Slide up | | j / ↓ | Slide down | | + / = | Grow the board (up to 6×6) | | - / _ | Shrink the board (down to 3×3) | | c | Keep playing (after reaching 2048) | | r / enter | Restart | | ? | Toggle the full help reference | | q | Quit |

Resizing the board starts a fresh game at the new size. Your best for the size you're leaving is saved first, and the new size loads its own best.

Command-line options

ink-2048 --size 5      # start on a 5×5 board (3–6, default 4)
ink-2048 --seed 12345  # reproducible tile spawns
ink-2048 --help        # usage

Persistent best scores are written to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ink-2048/scores.json (falling back to ~/.config/ink-2048/scores.json). Set INK_2048_DATA_DIR to override the location. If that file can't be written, the game plays fine and simply skips saving.

Rules

• Played on a square grid (default 4×4, configurable 3×3 to 6×6) that starts with two random tiles (90% are 2s, 10% are 4s).
• Each slide pushes every tile as far as it can go in that direction; equal adjacent tiles merge into their doubled value, and each tile merges at most once per move.
• A new tile spawns in a random empty cell after every move that changes the board (highlighted so you can see what changed). Moves that change nothing are ignored.
• Score is the sum of all merged tile values; Best is your saved best for the current board size; Moves counts board-changing slides.
• Reach the 2048 tile to win — then press c to keep playing toward higher tiles. The win target is 2048 at every size, so the smaller boards are a real expert challenge.
• You lose when the board is full and no merges remain.

Development

npm install
npm run build
node dist/cli.js

npm test
npm run typecheck

Game logic lives in pure TypeScript modules under src/game/ (deterministic, seeded RNG); Ink UI is under src/ui/.

Publish

Maintainers only. Requires access to the @terminalgames npm organization:

npm login
npm publish --access public