Crates

Puzzle · plays in your browser, no download

Push every crate onto a mark. You can only push, never pull — and a crate in a corner is lost.

Where it comes from

Pushing crates around a warehouse is a Japanese puzzle from the early eighties, and it became famous for a reason you cannot see while playing: it is far harder than it looks. Working out whether a warehouse can be cleared at all is among the hardest problems known — harder, in general, than almost anything else on a screen.

The reason is that there is no move to take back. A crate pushed into a corner stays there, and the level was lost ten moves before you noticed. It is the one game on this shelf where the wrong move does not punish you straight away: it waits.

How to play

Push every crate onto a red mark. When they are all on, the next warehouse opens.
So undo is part of the game, not a mercy: ↺ takes back as many moves as you like.
⟳ at the top starts this warehouse again from the beginning.
The two numbers are your pushes and the fewest possible. The second one is exact, not a guess.
Ten warehouses per level. Three stars means bigger ones, four crates, and no easy first move.

What makes this one different

A crate pushed into a corner never moves again, and that is the whole difficulty — so undo is part of the game here, not a mercy: take back as many moves as you like. The second number is the fewest pushes possible, and it is exact, not an estimate. Ten warehouses per level.

You can only push, never pull, and only one crate at a time: that is the whole rule set, and everything hard about the game comes out of it. The first number is your pushes and the second is the fewest possible, so you always know whether you solved it or merely survived it. Three stars means bigger warehouses, four crates, and no easy first move.

▶ Play Crates