About Stack Yard
A crane slides a load back and forth above a growing stack, and you choose the moment to let go. Crates hang over the edge and the overhang is sliced off, so a sloppy drop makes the stack narrower. Pallets are wide and forgiving, and win width back. Barrels are round and roll off unless they land in the middle. Tall crates stand on end and topple if a third of one hangs over the side. Land a load dead centre for a perfect, and string three perfects together to widen the stack again. The crane speeds up with every piece, so a run is short and losing one is the normal outcome.
How to play
- A crane slides a load back and forth above the stack. Tap, click or press Space to let it go.
- Crates that hang over the edge are sliced, so the stack narrows. Pallets stay if their middle is over the stack, barrels need the middle half, and tall crates topple if more than a third hangs over.
- Land within a thumb's width of the centre for a perfect: the load snaps to the middle and scores extra.
- A load held for 5 seconds drops by itself.
- The run ends when a load falls off. The crane speeds up with every piece and every second.
Tips
- Build a streak of perfects. A normal drop scores 1. A perfect scores 2, and each perfect in a row adds 1 more, up to 5. From the third in a row, each perfect also wins back width.
- Watch the green pip. The pip in the middle of the top lights up while the load is inside the perfect window. For pallets, barrels and tall crates, the band where the load can safely land is tinted too.
- Pallets rescue a thin stack. A pallet is never sliced. As long as its middle lands over the stack, its whole wide deck becomes the new top, undoing the damage from a run of sloppy crates.
- Barrels leave a narrow top. Only the crest of a barrel holds the next load, so the top after a barrel is narrower than the barrel. Aim the following crate carefully.
- Hesitating costs speed. The crane gets faster with every second as well as every piece, so waiting for a better pass makes the next one quicker. Its steady speed keeps the rhythm the same each pass.
Read the full Stack Yard guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Stack Yard is a one-tap stacker: a crane trolley slides a load back and forth over the stack, and a tap, click or Space lets go. I built it in plain JavaScript on a 2D canvas, on a small shared runtime I wrote for my one-verb games, which handles loading, screen fitting, input, sound and saving.
There is no physics engine. Each landing is decided the moment you let go, by one rule per kind of piece, so a player can learn it and a test can prove it. A crate that overhangs has the overhang sliced off, so sloppy drops narrow the stack. A pallet stays while its middle is over the stack and wins width back. A barrel only stays in the middle half of the top. A tall crate falls if more than a third hangs off one side. A drop within 7 units of the middle is perfect and pays double. The dealer only deals a piece onto a top where it can still land, and the trolley speed is capped so a perfect drop is always possible.
The art is a new side-on sheet rendered from POLYGON Battle Royale Pack by Synty Studios. I did not reuse Run and Gun's top-down props, because this game's rules are about the width you can see.
Son Hoang, who made Stack Yard
Update history
- Added a looping tavern tune from Vasco Grossmann's Fantasy Music Lite.
- The score readout now sits in the centre of the top bar.
- First release: tap to drop each load from a crane trolley onto a stack on a shipping container.
Questions
Does Stack Yard save my progress?
It saves your best score in this browser's local storage, shown on the pause sheet and at the end of each run. The stack itself is not kept; every run starts again on an empty container.
Can I play Stack Yard on a phone?
Yes. Tap anywhere to drop the load, held upright or sideways. The perfect window is wide enough that a perfect drop stays possible even at the crane's top speed.
When do barrels and tall crates appear?
The first three loads are always crates. Pallets can appear from the 4th piece, barrels from the 6th and tall crates from the 8th. You never get two pallets or two barrels in a row.
Is there an ending?
No. The crane's speed rises to a cap and the stack keeps climbing until a load falls, so the aim is a taller stack and a higher score than last time.
