Site games
Five short games about concrete work. One you can only play once a day, one that will not let you rush a chute, one that punishes a late swing, one that is decided by a bubble you cannot quite hold still, and one that asks what you would actually charge.
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What each game is actually testing
None of these are skins over an unrelated mechanic. Each one turns a rule that appears elsewhere on this site into something you fail at until you feel it.
Pour
The chute is a throttle, not a button. Press and drag up to open it, let go and it closes — but the concrete already in the chute still lands. So you have to release early by exactly the amount the flow will carry, and the gauge on the right magnifies two inches of depth so that "exactly" is a distance you can see. Five pits, each one tighter and faster than the last.
The arithmetic behind the reveal is the one on the concrete calculator page: length × width × depth ÷ 27. The pit dimensions come from today's date, so everybody gets the same five shapes and the score is worth comparing.
Site swap
Aggregate, cement, rebar, brick, water, timber. Swap two neighbours, line up three, load the batch. Chains after a fall pay the multiplier again, which is why a good board is one where the second match drops into place on its own. Twenty-six swaps to clear the target — the only untimed game here, and the one to open when you are waiting for a truck.
Stake drive
The hammer head sweeps across the top of the stake twice a cycle. The green band is where it connects, and the bright core of that band is a clean hit. Tap as it crosses. Every hit drives the stake a little further and speeds the swing up, so the window you just got comfortable with is gone — that is the whole difficulty curve, and it is the same one a real driver fights when the ground gets harder.
Level
Two axes, not one. The stick is proportional, the ball has momentum, and the target ring drifts, so you are tracking rather than holding. Let go and the slab goes back to level but the ball does not: it keeps rolling with whatever it had. Three drops and the form is on the ground.
Quick quote
You are the contractor. A job and your cost appear, and you have ten seconds to put a number on it. Under the red cost line you are paying to work. Over the green band nobody calls you back. The band is the range published on the concrete driveway cost page, and the game tells you how tight the week is, so a bad run here is a decent signal that the cost guide is worth reading before you sign anything.
Why these live under Extras
Same reason the word tools do. A site that mixes games into its calculator index is harder for a reader to trust and harder for a search engine to categorise. The games are here, reachable, and out of the main navigation.
What is stored
Your best scores and whether you have already poured today, both in this browser's local storage. There is no account, no server call, and no analytics event tied to gameplay. Clearing site data clears it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the daily pour the same for everyone?
Yes. The pit dimensions are generated from the calendar date, so every visitor on the same day gets the identical shape without the site needing a server or a database. It changes at local midnight.
Do these games send anything to a server?
No. All five run in the browser and the only thing stored is your best scores, kept in this browser's local storage. Nothing is transmitted, which is also why they work offline once the page has loaded.
How does the material matching game relate to the site?
The six pieces are what actually goes into a slab: aggregate, cement, rebar, brick, water and timber. Matching three loads a batch. It is the only game here that is not timed, and the one to open when you are waiting for something else.
Where do the quote ranges in the last game come from?
From this site's own cost pages: driveway rates of $6 to $11 per square foot at 4 inches, $8 to $13 at 5 inches, and $9 to $14 at 6 inches, plus $2 to $4 per square foot for removing plain concrete. The full derivation, including what each range excludes, is on the concrete driveway cost page.
Why do the games look like solids rather than pictures?
Each object is drawn as three lit faces — a bright top, a mid-tone left side and a dark right side — plus a contact shadow on the ground. That is the whole illusion. It is drawn with the browser's 2D canvas rather than a 3D engine, which is why the page stays small and still runs at frame rate on a phone.