Crates

Crates is a push puzzle. You can push a crate one square at a time. You can never pull. You can only push one crate, never two. Push a crate into a corner and it is stuck forever.

That is every rule. Three levels, three puzzles, all built from those constraints. The game has no enemies, no timer, no randomness — just you, the crates, and the targets.

This is the eighth and last game in Volume 2 — Patterns of State — and it makes the whole volume's idea literal: the 2D array is the world. Sonar and The Caverns read their worlds; here you read and write one — every wall, floor, target and crate is a number in the grid, and moving, colliding, pushing and winning are all reading and writing that one array. Two things are new: the world is loaded from DATA strings laid out like a map, and the player moves in real time with INKEY$ — no ENTER between moves.

What you will build:

• A warehouse held in a 2D array, loaded from DATA strings drawn as a map (the new idea)
• A player who moves the instant you press a key, read with INKEY$ (the new idea)
• Walls that block movement — a single lookahead into the grid
• The push: a two-cell lookahead that moves a crate only if the space beyond is clear
• Targets, crates-on-targets, and a win when every target is covered
• The finished game: three DATA-driven levels, a restart key, a move count, and replay

6 units. About 7–9 hours. This builds on Meet BASIC and Volume 1 — earlier games assumed.