Sorting and Logistics Arcade Games

Treasure Conveyor looks like a catcher and is not one. The moment every item has a destination and your hands have a limit, catching stops being the question and routing starts - which is a slower, more deliberate kind of pressure than reflexes.

Destinations are what change the game

Four enchanted belts run across the vault at different speeds and in different directions, carrying everything the hoard ever swallowed. You stand between them on a lift.

Every item has a chute it belongs in: gold to the left, crystals to the right. Taking an item puts it in your hands until you deliver it, and you can carry three.

Deliver to the right chute and it pays in full. Deliver to the wrong one and it pays nothing and costs you the streak - so an item in the wrong hands is worse than an item you never took.

That inversion is the whole difference between this and a catcher. In a catcher, more is always better. Here, taking something you cannot deliver is a mistake you made several seconds before it costs you anything.

Three slots is the real constraint

The carry limit is what turns a simple rule into a continuous problem.

With unlimited hands you would take everything and sort at leisure. With three slots, every pickup is a commitment of a third of your capacity, and a hand full of gold makes you blind to crystals for as long as it takes to reach the left chute.

The situation the game is built around: a crystal appears on the top belt while you are carrying two gold items and standing beside the left chute. Is it worth crossing for? Is there room? And will the belt have carried it past by the time you get there?

Three questions, several seconds to answer, and the answer changes while you are answering it. That is logistics rather than reflexes, and it is why this game rewards a completely different temperament from the runners.

Full loads beat opportunistic ones

The efficient pattern is to fill all three slots with items destined for the same chute and deliver them together.

The reason is travel. A trip to the left chute costs the same whether you are carrying one gold item or three, so a single-item delivery pays a third as much for the same crossing - and the crossings are where all your time goes.

This makes the correct behaviour counterintuitive in a specific way: it is frequently right to stand still and wait for a third matching item rather than to deliver two and come back.

The exception is when a belt is about to carry something valuable out of reach. Timing beats efficiency when the alternative is losing the item entirely, and belts run at different speeds specifically so that this trade-off keeps arising.

Cursed relics

They look like treasure, ride the same belts, and are marked only by a slow violet pulse.

Picking one up fills a carry slot with something that has to be dropped down the centre grate, which costs the time you were going to use for something else. It is not a damage mechanic - it is a tax on inattention, paid in the currency the game actually runs on.

The pulse is slow deliberately. A fast flash would be visible at a glance and the relic would never catch anyone; a slow one requires you to actually look at what you are taking, which is precisely the habit the game wants to build.

The practical defence is to look before you reach rather than after. Given that every pickup is a third of your capacity, a half-second of checking is cheap insurance.

Reading four belts at different speeds

The belts do not run at the same rate or in the same direction, which means the vault presents a different arrangement every few seconds without any of the individual pieces changing.

The useful mental habit is to treat each belt as a deadline rather than as a location. An item on the fast belt is a decision you have two seconds to make; the same item on the slow belt is a decision you can defer.

So the order of operations is usually determined for you. Handle the fast belt first, not because its items are more valuable but because its window is shorter, and the slow belt will still be there.

This is the same principle as fighting in arrival order in the arena games, and it is worth noticing that it transfers. Whenever several things demand attention, the one with the shortest window goes first regardless of its value.

Five habits

For a game that rewards deliberation over speed.

• Fill all three slots for one chute before delivering - the crossing costs the same either way.
• Look before you reach; the violet pulse on a cursed relic is deliberately slow.
• Treat each belt as a deadline, and handle the fast one first.
• An item you cannot deliver is worse than one you never took.
• Stand still to wait for a third match more often than feels natural.

Why logistics games feel different to play

Every other game in this category rewards quick hands. This one rewards a plan that survives two seconds, and the difference is worth naming because players who are good at the rest of the site often start badly here.

The reason is that the pressure is deferred. In a runner, a mistake is visible immediately - you hit the thing. Here, a mistake is picking up a crystal while standing beside the gold chute, and it does not cost you anything until several seconds later when you discover you have no free hands.

Deferred consequences are harder to learn from, because the moment of failure is not the moment of error. The habit that shortcuts this is to narrate the commitment as you make it: 'that is my third slot, I am now going left'.

Once the plan is explicit, the errors become visible at the point you make them, which is the only place they can actually be fixed.

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