Traffic Escape.

How to play Traffic Escape

1. Press Play, then choose Departures, Gridlock, Daily or Commute, or continue where you left off.
2. In Departures, follow each roof arrow along its whole route. Curved arrows turn one cell ahead. Tap a vehicle whose route is clear; hovering or focusing it shows the route dots.
3. If you tap a blocked vehicle it bumps the first vehicle in its way and returns. Clear that vehicle first, or work backward to find the one that can leave now.
4. In Gridlock, drag a car or truck along its lane, or tap it and then tap a free space in its lane. Vehicles never turn or jump over one another.
5. Open a path in the third row so the orange coupe can reach the gap on the right. Try to match par, the fewest possible moves.
6. Use Undo freely. Hint shows the next best move; Restart begins the same puzzle again.

Make your move

About Traffic Escape

Traffic Escape is an original browser puzzle set in a toy-like city of rounded cars, box vans, buses, trams and delivery trucks. It holds two different kinds of traffic jam. In Departures, every vehicle drives in the direction of the arrow painted on its roof, and your job is to find a vehicle whose whole route to the edge is clear. Tap it and it pulls away onto the ring road; the street gets a little emptier and new routes open. In Gridlock, vehicles never leave on their own. They slide back and forth in their own lane, and you rearrange them until the orange coupe can drive out through the gap on the right.

Departures has 180 streets across nine districts. Harbor Mornings, the Old Town and Golden Hour keep the thirty original streets, then Market Hill adds long trucks, the Canal Quarter adds planters that shape the road, and Tram Lines introduces vehicles with curved arrows that drive one cell ahead and then turn. Night Lights, Festival Avenue and the Grand Junction finish with boards of up to fourteen rows and nearly forty vehicles. Every street is built so that it can be cleared, and because vehicles only ever leave, any clear vehicle is always a safe choice. The skill is reading the routes and avoiding bumps.

Gridlock has 2,000 lots in five tiers of 400: Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert and Master. Each lot is minimal, which means every vehicle on it matters, and each one starts from the hardest position of its family of positions. The par shown on screen is the true minimum number of moves, found by searching every reachable arrangement, where one move is one vehicle sliding any distance. Easy lots need two to seven moves. Master lots need twenty-seven or more; the longest needs 51. Some lots add fixed yellow bollards that nothing can move.

Stars reward clean play. In Departures, a street cleared with no bumps and no hint earns three stars, bumps without a hint earn two, and a hinted street earns one. In Gridlock, matching par earns three stars, finishing within about half as many moves again earns two, and any solve earns one; a hinted solve earns one star. Undo never costs anything. Sliding the same vehicle several times in a row counts as one move, and sliding it back to where it began cancels the move entirely, so experimenting is free.

The Daily mode gives everyone the same Gridlock lot and the same Departures street each day. Monday puzzles are gentle and Sunday puzzles are the toughest of the week. Solving at least one daily puzzle on consecutive days builds a streak, and a copy-ready result line lets you compare with friends without spoiling the solution. Commute is the arcade mode: two minutes on the clock, one point per departure, five more for clearing a street, twelve extra seconds per cleared street and a three-second penalty for each bump. The streets grow as you go.

The city is built from original three-dimensional shapes in Babylon.js, with no downloaded models. Streets sit inside a grid of two-lane roads, buildings and gardens, and departing vehicles turn onto the road and drive away. Blocked vehicles lurch forward, honk and settle back while the vehicle in the way wobbles and flashes. Solved lots lift a striped barrier and send the coupe out, and finished puzzles end with confetti. Sounds are synthesized in the browser. Reduced-motion settings make every movement instant while keeping the rules the same.

Progress, stars, best move counts, daily streaks, unfinished attempts and the sound setting are stored in this browser. Saves from the first version of the game carry over: finished streets keep their stars. Progress does not sync between devices, and if storage is blocked the game still plays but forgets when you leave. Levels open a few at a time: the next three streets and the next three lots past your furthest solve are always available, and each Gridlock tier opens after five solves in the one before.

A little help for your next high score

• In Departures, scan the edges first, but check the whole route: a vehicle far along the lane blocks just as much as one right in front.
• Curved arrows need two things clear: the cell straight ahead and the lane after the turn.
• In Gridlock, look at what blocks the coupe, then at what blocks those vehicles. Solving backward from the exit is often faster.
• Long trucks in a column usually need to go all the way to one end. Decide early which end.
• Sliding the same vehicle twice in a row counts once, so it is fine to nudge and adjust.
• Hints show how many moves remain from your current position, which is a good way to learn why a line is longer than par.

Good questions