Box Pusher

Push every crate onto a target. Sixty levels, unlimited undo, three hints each.

• Puzzle Games
• Ages 6-9
• Ages 9-12
• Ages 12+
• Games for Girls
• Games for Boys

Box Pusher is a sokoban-style puzzle that runs right here in the browser. You walk a little warehouse worker around a grid and push crates onto the marked squares; you can push one crate at a time, you can never pull, and the level ends the moment every crate is home. The first levels take a single push. The last ones take more than eighty, and every one of the sixty has a par score that we know is the true minimum, because a solver proved it before the level went in. There is unlimited undo, three hints per level, nothing to download and no ads.

How to play

1. Move with the arrow keys or WASD. On a phone, swipe in a direction, use the on-screen arrows, or tap an empty square to walk there.
2. Walk into a crate to push it one square. You can only push one crate at a time, and only if the square behind it is free. Crates cannot be pulled.
3. A crate on a target square turns dark. When every crate is on a target, the level is complete.
4. Pushed a crate into a corner? Press Z (or the Undo button) as many times as you like, or R to restart the level.
5. Stuck? The Hint button shows the next push with an arrow. You get three per level, and using one caps the level at two stars.
6. Finish in the par number of pushes for three stars. Stars and best scores are saved on your device.

Why it is not just clicking

A crate in a corner can never leave it, and a crate against a wall can only slide along that wall. Those two facts are the whole game: before every push you have to see whether the crate will still be free afterwards, and the levels are built so that the obvious push is often the one that traps you. What keeps it fair is that par is real. The levels were generated by a program and then solved by a breadth-first search that explores every possible sequence of pushes, so the par printed at the top is the proven shortest solution - not a guess, and not padded. The three worlds change the look, not the rules: the same logic carries you from level 1, which is a single push, to level 60, which is five crates on a ten-by-ten board and eighty-three pushes at best.

How hard is it?

The sixty levels are sorted into five bands by measured difficulty. Levels 1 and 2 teach the two moves (push, and walk around to push from the other side). Levels 3 to 10 have two crates and three to seven pushes. Levels 11 to 30 grow to four crates and up to twenty-five pushes. Levels 31 to 50 have three to five crates and twenty-six to sixty pushes. Levels 51 to 60 are the master band: four or five crates, sixty-one to eighty-three optimal pushes, and typically over two hundred and fifty moves of walking. Each world's first level is always open, so you can skip ahead, and undo is unlimited everywhere.

Is it right for younger players?

From about six on the first ten levels: the rule is a single sentence, the boards are small, and undo means a mistake costs one key press rather than a restart. Seven- to nine-year-olds usually get well into the second world on their own. The third world and the master levels are genuine adult puzzles that can take a quarter of an hour of thinking each. There is no timer anywhere, so nobody is rushed.

For parents

There are no ads, no pop-ups, no sign-up and nothing to buy. The game runs entirely in your browser and collects nothing; stars and best scores are saved on your own device and go nowhere else. We built it ourselves rather than licensing it. A level takes anywhere from ten seconds to fifteen minutes, there is no clock and no penalty for undoing, so it suits a child who likes to think things through - and it stops cleanly when you close the tab.

In the classroom

This is spatial reasoning and planning in its purest form: the child has to predict a sequence of moves before making them and to recognise dead-end states (a crate in a corner) early. The par score makes 'find a shorter way' a concrete task, and undo makes trying alternatives cheap. Levels 1 to 10 fit a five-minute slot; the master levels work well as a pair task where two children argue over the order of pushes.

Questions