Subtraction Stack

Slide the whole grid in one direction and tiles travel until they collide. When a number tile meets a minus-tile, its value drops by that amount. Reduce any tile to exactly the target number to win, but overshoot below zero and you lose.

• Slide to move every tile at once
• A number tile meeting a minus-tile subtracts in place
• Land a tile exactly on the target to win
• Dropping below zero, running out of moves, or filling the board ends the run

• Desktop: arrow keys or WASD to slide the grid
• Phone & tablet: swipe in any direction

• Daily: a shared seeded target and move budget
• Practice: randomized puzzles to train on

• Plan the order of subtractions, since overshooting past zero is an instant loss
• Keep spare minus-tiles in reserve so you can fine-tune the final approach
• Mind your roughly thirty-move budget and avoid wasted slides

Sliding a whole grid so tiles travel until they collide is 2048, written over a weekend by the Italian developer Gabriele Cirulli and released on 9 March 2014 as free and open-source software.

The original inversion is arithmetic direction: minus-tiles reduce what they meet, and the target is a specific number you must hit exactly without dropping below zero.

That flips where the danger is. In 2048 a mistake wastes a turn and clutters the board; aiming at an exact target means overshoot is fatal, so the game rewards approaching from above and slowing down — which is the opposite instinct to the one the parent trains.

Subtraction Stack is an original free browser sliding number-merge puzzle with a subtractive twist, rewarding arithmetic planning over luck. No download required.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.