Claw Cargo

Planning a route through the bay

Twenty slots, five item types, one order

The cargo bay is five columns by four rows — twenty slots — holding five kinds of item. The order always asks for the same six pieces: two pulse batteries, two prism crystals, and two glow plants. The other two item types, standard parcels and fragile capsules, are never requested.

You have ten grabs. Each one retrieves whatever sits in the slot you chose, whether or not the order needs it, and a grab spent on an unwanted item is gone. Six of your ten grabs are therefore already committed before you start; the remaining four are your entire margin for error.

The bay layout is fixed rather than randomised, so the puzzle is the same every time. This is a route-planning problem with a knowable optimal solution, not a game of chance.

The bonus is the game

Item values are close together — the requested items are worth between 170 and 200 apiece — so collecting them is not where the score is decided. The completion bonus is: 800 for finishing the order, plus 200 for every grab you did not use. Four unused grabs are worth 800 on their own, which is more than any two items you could collect.

That reframes the whole game. The goal is not to collect valuable cargo, it is to complete the order in as few grabs as possible. A perfect run is six grabs, taking exactly the six items required and nothing else, which banks the full 800 completion bonus plus 800 for the four grabs left over.

Because the layout is fixed, that perfect run is repeatable once you have found it. Scan the bay before your first grab and identify which slots hold your two batteries, two crystals, and two plants — every slot you touch beyond those six costs you 200 points.

Where the points come from

Each collected item adds its own value: crystals are worth the most of the requested types, then batteries, then plants. Parcels and capsules are worth less and, since they are never ordered, collecting one is a pure loss of 200 bonus points against a small item value.

The completion bonus dwarfs all of it. Finishing the order at all is worth 800, and each unused grab adds a further 200 — so the difference between a six-grab run and a ten-grab run is 800 points, far more than the spread between any items you might pick up along the way.

Common mistakes

The recurring error is treating this as a collecting game rather than an efficiency one.

• Grabbing high-value items that are not on the order. A crystal you do not need still costs a grab worth 200 bonus points, which is more than the item is worth.
• Starting before scanning the bay. The layout is fixed and fully visible, so the optimal six slots can be identified before spending a single grab.
• Treating leftover grabs as free. Each unused grab is worth 200, so stopping the moment the order is complete is always correct — there is nothing to gain by using the remainder.
• Assuming the claw can fail. It always retrieves the selected slot, so a wasted grab is always a planning error rather than bad luck.

What is different about this version

There is no grip chance and no drop mechanic. Real claw machines are built around an unreliable grab; this one always retrieves what you selected, which converts the game from a gamble into a solvable planning puzzle with a genuine optimal answer.

The bay layout and the order are both fixed rather than generated, so the perfect six-grab route is discoverable and repeatable. Improving your score means improving your plan, and every point of the difference between a good run and a bad one is attributable to a decision you made.

Written by the Silverweb Games team from this game’s own implementation. Last reviewed July 31, 2026.