Container Works

Take the seat in the cab of a ship-to-shore container crane. Two levers are all you have: the trolley runs along the boom, the hoist lowers the spreader on four ropes. Land it dead centre on a container, lock the twistlocks, lift, travel, set it down. Easy in calm air – but the load is a pendulum. Brake too hard and it swings; the wind pushes it sideways; swing too far and the container tears off the locks and crashes onto the quay or into the harbour.

A feeder ship waits at the quay with its cargo. Trucks pull up and want one particular container, trains take any two. Every delivery earns points and bonus time, an empty ship brings the next one in. Each ten-minute shift has a container goal that unlocks the next shift, plus two bonus tasks worth a star each: load three trucks, complete a train, lose nothing, hit a score. Shift 1 is almost windless; by shift 8 you are working in a gale with gusts and impatient drivers.

Endless mode has no clock and no goal: the wind keeps freshening every few minutes and the shift ends after three lost containers. All eight shifts are free to play; best scores go to the club leaderboard.