[eyelidlessness]

> But I was able to solve the puzzle by continually rotating the same direction.

I’m not gonna ruin the original game’s mechanics for anyone who hasn’t already had them ruined, but I will say I recently tried exactly this strategy in the original and it gets you surprisingly far. But it’s definitely not a winning strategy.

[agileAlligator]

I've spent unhealthy amounts of time playing 2048, and so far the best strategy I have come up with is never swipe up unless absolutely necessary and even then swiping up will likely cause the game to end in the next few moves (unless you get lucky and resolve the stuck block in some way)

[phkahler]

In 2048 I find alternating between right and down swipes goes really far. Or any other 2 adjacent directions. I know I made it to 8192 at least once and perhaps 16384 - not by just alternating swipes of course.