Box Push

How to play

Use the arrow keys or W A S D to walk one square at a time. Walking into a crate pushes it, if the square beyond it is empty. Tapping a square next to you steps there; tapping one further away walks you to it, going around crates rather than through them.

The level is finished when every dashed target ring has a crate on it. The rings stay visible underneath, so you can always see which crates have arrived.

Crates can only be pushed, never pulled. That is the whole difficulty of the game and the reason Undo has no limit and no penalty.

Rules and controls

• You walk on floor squares, one at a time, never diagonally.
• Walking into a crate pushes it one square, if the square beyond is empty.
• Crates can never be pulled.
• Only one crate can be pushed at a time, never two in a row.
• The level is done when every target has a crate on it.
• Undo and redo as much as you like — Undo, Redo, or the U and R keys.
• To push a crate you must stand on the opposite side of it, so a crate against a wall can only slide along that wall.

Modes

• Campaign — Sixty warehouses that get harder. Finish one to open the next.
• Move-par challenge — The same warehouses, with a move budget. Every wasted step counts against you.
• Daily Warehouse — One warehouse, the same for everybody, seeded by the UTC date.
• Free select — Replay any warehouse you have opened, or build a fresh one at any size.

Tips

• Look at the corners before you touch anything. A crate pushed into a corner that is not a target has ended the level.
• Work out which crate belongs on which target first. It is usually forced, and finding out halfway through is expensive.
• A crate you have finished with is in everybody’s way. Do the awkward one first, and leave the crate nearest the door until last.
• A crate flat against a wall can only slide along it. If its target is not on that wall, it is already lost.
• If you are unsure, turn on dead squares for a level or two. It shows the shape of the trap much faster than falling into it does.

Privacy and local play

Everything runs in your browser. Your current warehouse, your settings, your campaign progress and your best runs are kept on this device only, and the button under the board clears them without touching any other Zerdly tool. No account, no sign-in, and nothing about your play leaves the machine you are on.

Questions

I have pushed a crate into a corner and cannot get it out. What now?

Undo. Crates can only be pushed, never pulled, so a crate in a corner is there for good and the level cannot be finished from that position. There is no penalty for undoing and no limit on it — it is how the game is played, not an admission of anything. The route will tell you as soon as a position has become impossible rather than letting you push on for another twenty moves.

Why will this crate not move?

Because you would have to stand somewhere you cannot stand. To push a crate to the right you must be immediately to its left, so a crate flat against the left wall can never be pushed right — there is nowhere for you to be. That is also why a crate against a wall can only ever slide along it, and why a crate in a corner cannot move at all.

Can I push two crates at once?

No. A crate moves only if the square directly beyond it is empty, so a crate with another crate behind it will not budge.

What is the par, exactly?

The number of moves a push-optimal solution takes — one that moves the crates as few times as possible. It is a target rather than a floor: a push-optimal solution is not always the shortest possible walk, so a careful player can come in under par. It is never described here as a minimum, because it is not one.

How is the move-par challenge different from the campaign?

It is a different objective on the same warehouses. In the campaign, walking about while you think costs you nothing. Against par, every wasted step counts, so the game turns from “can this be done” into “is this the tidy way to do it”. Its records are kept separately, because a move count from a run where wandering was free is not comparable with one where it was not.

What are dead squares?

Squares a crate could never be pushed out of towards any target — every corner, and every stretch of wall with no target on it. Turning the shading on changes no rule, no timing and no score; it just shows you the trap before you fall into it rather than twenty moves later. It is off by default.

What do the difficulty names mean?

A band is measured by solving the warehouse rather than attached to it by the generator, and it counts pushes rather than moves. The cuts differ by size, deliberately: a small warehouse holds two crates in thirty squares and its deepest possible position is around thirteen pushes from home, so a tricky small warehouse is tricky for a small warehouse. The three sizes are not directly comparable.

Does the hint ever guess?

No. It solves the position you are actually in and offers the first push of a shortest remaining solution, and it tells you how many pushes are left from there. If the position can no longer be finished it says so instead of suggesting a move that leads nowhere.

Are the levels solvable?

Every one, and this is checked rather than assumed. The sixty campaign warehouses are built and solved when the site is built, and each one is then re-loaded from the map that ships, re-solved, and its solution replayed move by move through the same rules you play by. Warehouses made on demand are solved before they are handed to you.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. The generator, the solver, the hints, the sounds and your progress all run in your browser. There is no account, and clearing this game’s data leaves every other Zerdly tool untouched.

Related interactives

• Bridges — join the islands into one network, with the same one-solution guarantee.
• Slitherlink — draw a single closed loop from the numbers.
• Nonogram — picture logic, one solution per board.
• 2048 — the other sliding puzzle, where the board pushes back.