Cirulli (original)

The classic 2048 ramp. Hand-tuned sigmoid: beige plateau on 2-4, warm-red blowout through 8-64, clean linear gold ramp to 2048 -- then the ramp BREAKS: every super-tile (4096+) is the same #3c3a32 near-black. Past-the-end signaling.

Cirulli continued

The live game palette. The original, but the gold ramp doesn't break at 4096 -- it keeps climbing. The gold cools into glowing embers: amber, ember orange, hot coal, deep ember red, down to a cooling-coal near-black at 65536. Same warm DNA and cream-on-warm text as Cirulli; the super-tiles earn their own identity instead of a flat past-the-end slate.

OKLCH linear

Equal perceptual step per doubling (Weber-Fechner honest). Calm and legible, but 2048 doesn't feel like an event -- every tier weighs the same.

Chroma blowout

Lightness drifts gently; chroma climbs convex. Late tiles radiate -- back-loaded drama. 1024 and 2048 feel almost incandescent against the muted low end.

Sigmoid lightness

Flat-plunge-flat. The 64-to-256 stretch is a regime change; the top tier is a dark slate plateau. Mid-game is where the work feels visible.

Blackbody march

Dim deep red to white-hot, hue confined to the warm half of the wheel (28 -> 90). Chroma decays as lightness climbs -- saturated at the cool end, near-neutral when incandescent. Reads as a glowing element.

Spectral cascade

Each tile is one octave of light frequency walking the EM spectrum -- H-alpha red through the visible band, lightness peaking at green (photopic max), fading into the void at the visible edge (deep UV, 8192). Past sight the ionizing bands -- X-ray, gamma -- re-emerge in the false-color of high-energy astronomy, climbing to a blinding cold white: the most energetic light shown as the brightest, not invisible.

Stellar ascent

Stellar classification by surface temperature: M red dwarf -> K -> G (Sun) -> F -> A (Sirius) -> B (Rigel) -> O blue supergiant -> Wolf-Rayet -> luminous blue variable. The death sequence is paced to land at the top: a SUPERNOVA flash (2048), then the remnant -- magenta shock nebula, neutron star, magnetar, dimming accretion -- collapsing to the black-hole void at 65536. Warm rise, violent peak, exotic dark terminus.

Phase transitions

Bands of tiles share a state of matter, with hue jumps at each transition. Solid (frosty ice) -> liquid (cohesive blue) -> gas (warm mist) -> plasma (ionized magenta-violet) -> quark-gluon plasma (electric cyan-blue). The QGP then runs back up the energy ladder toward the early universe -- the Planck epoch as a blinding white-hot deconfinement at 65536. Each doubling of energy unlocks a hotter regime.