Cargo Snake — Rules & Strategy

A snake game with FIFO logistics bolted on. Your body is the cargo hold, and first loaded is first out. Eat a red crate right now, and you can't get it out until everything loaded ahead of it has shipped.

▶ Play Cargo Snake · 한국어로 읽기

The one-line version

Every move here is two decisions stacked — where to drive (the route) and what order to load (the manifest). Eat a crate you didn't need and your delivery order comes apart.

Core rules

1. Loading. Drive over a crate and it loads onto the back (tail) of your body. Your body grows by one segment, and whatever chain you had going resets to zero immediately.
2. Delivery. Drive your head into a depot (one of four fixed color zones) and your tail crate drops — but only when the depot's color matches your tail's color. Any other color and nothing happens. You never get to choose which crate leaves; it's always the tail.
3. The manifest. A color sequence sits at the top of the screen. Deliver in that exact order to score. Deliver out of sequence and the crate still leaves, but for zero points, and your chain breaks. Manifest length grows as you go — starting at 2 crates and climbing to 6.
4. The chain. Deliver back-to-back without eating anything new and the multiplier climbs ×1.0 → ×1.6 → ×2.3 → ×3.2 → ×4.2 → ×5.5 (each delivery is worth a base 100 points times this multiplier). Eat a single crate and the chain snaps straight back to ×1.0.
5. Freshness. Cargo starts spoiling the instant it's loaded and goes bad after 18 seconds. A spoiled crate still delivers when its turn comes, but for zero points, and it breaks your chain too.
6. Crashes. Hitting a wall, a pillar, or your own body doesn't end the run — it spills your entire load onto the ground and burns shift time. The penalty is «3 seconds + 1.5 seconds per crate you were carrying», so a heavy load makes a crash expensive. Your very first crash of the run is forgiven and costs a flat 2 seconds only.
7. The shift clock. The top bar is your total time budget, fixed at 120 seconds. Completing a manifest never adds time back — only crashes cost you time (2s for your first, then 3s plus 1.5s per crate carried). Hit zero and the shift ends.

Manifest bonuses and speed, exactly

Clear an entire manifest and you earn a completion bonus — «150 × the manifest's length» as a base, doubled if you finished it without ever breaking the chain (your chain count at completion has to be at least as long as the manifest). Green (G) cargo and its depot unlock starting with your 5th manifest, and warehouse pillars start narrowing your lanes from the 3rd manifest onward. Your movement speed edges up a little with every manifest, while every crate you're currently carrying slows each move down — a heavy trailer is easier to steer, but since the shift clock runs in real time regardless of how fast you're moving, hauling a full load also means covering the same distance takes longer. Your final score sets the grade: 17,000+ is Logistics King, 11,000+ is Dock Lead, 6,000+ is Veteran, 2,500+ is Driver, and anything below that is Trainee.

Strategy

1. "It's right there" is what wrecks most runs

The moment you eat a crate just because it's sitting on your route, that crate loads in behind whatever the manifest actually needs next. Anything loaded behind it can't come out until everything ahead of it ships — which means an extra round trip to a depot you didn't need to visit. Drive around colors that aren't on the manifest.

2. Batch-loading vs. one-at-a-time — the answer is "one whole manifest at a time"

Load one, deliver one and you're safe, but the chain never builds past ×1.0. Load the entire manifest in order first, then run the depot loop, and you stack ×1.0 → ×1.6 → ×2.3 → ×3.2 in a row — the same four crates are worth several times as much, and a clean run doubles the completion bonus on top. The cost: a longer body crashes more easily, and whatever you loaded first spoils first — so batching only pays off when you can actually plan the depot route in advance.

3. Loading order is your depot route

What you load first is what unloads first, so plan your depot loop before you eat a single crate. Load red, then blue, then yellow, and you must visit red's depot, then blue's, then yellow's — in that order. The manifest already fixes the sequence for you; the only real decision left is the shortest collection path that satisfies it.

4. A crash is a bill, not a death — and the first one's free

Crashing doesn't end the run. It spills your entire load and burns time proportional to how much you were carrying — hitting something empty is cheap, hitting something full is a disaster. Your very first crash of the run only costs 2 seconds and doesn't spill anything, so save that freebie for the genuinely dangerous stretch instead of the first pillar you see.

5. Sometimes it's worth dumping cargo that's about to spoil

When your tail crate is closing in on 18 seconds old, don't wrench your route around trying to save it — deliver it to the nearest matching depot for zero points and restart the chain instead. That beats crashing while cutting a hard turn to rescue a crate that was going to score nothing anyway.

6. Run lighter and shorter as the shift goes on

Pillars show up from the 3rd manifest, green cargo joins from the 5th, and movement keeps getting faster the whole time. Late in a run, loading only as much as you can actually handle — instead of maximizing every batch — keeps your crash odds down when the board gets crowded.

FAQ

I drove into a depot and nothing happened. Why?

Because your tail crate is a different color than the depot. You can never pick which crate to unload — the leftmost chip in the loading strip (your tail) is the only one that can leave right now.

Is delivering the only way to shrink my body?

Delivering and crashing, those are the only two. A crash definitely shortens you — it spills your whole load — but it costs you shift time in return.

Does completing a manifest add more time?

No. The shift clock is a fixed 120-second budget and only ever goes down. Completing a manifest never adds time back. Your first crash is cheap — 2 seconds and your load stays on — but every crash after that costs 3 seconds plus 1.5 per crate you were carrying, and spills the whole load. The entire game is how many manifests you can clear inside that fixed window.

Do I need an account?

No. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.

Where is my progress stored?

Your best score, best manifest count and badges live in your browser's local storage only — never sent to a server.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. Swipe the board or use the on-screen directional pad.

Other guides

• EcoFlip — rules and strategy · Reversi where conquest kills you — plant species but let one dominate and famine follows
• Breath Snake — rules and strategy · a snake diving on a single breath, where depth pays but the trip home gets expensive
• Murder Grid — rules and strategy · solve a 6x6 sudoku for clues, catch two liars, name the culprit
• About playbuns · design principles, how the games are built, our advertising rules

This page is updated whenever the rules change. If you spot an error, tell us through contact.