The Civil Enforcement Officer's handbook

How to play

Each level is one stretch of street. The notebook at the top says how many tickets to write. Write them before the drivers get back to their cars.

One action, one minute

The game is turn-based. Nothing moves until you do, and everything you do takes one minute: a step along the pavement, crossing the road at a zebra, writing a ticket, or waiting. After each minute the clock moves on and every countdown drops by one.

Reading the tags

Every car has a tag over it from the very first minute. Nothing is hidden.

• Red, with a number: parked illegally. The number is how many minutes until the driver is back. You can still write the ticket on the last minute. At 0 the car drives off, and if it had no ticket it got away.
• Grey meter, then red: paid and displayed. The grey number is the minutes left on the meter. When it runs out the tag turns red and the car is fair game, until its driver comes back.
• Green tick: a resident permit or a paid bay. It is legal, so leave it alone.

The puzzle is the order. The nearest car is not always the one to go for, and sometimes the notebook has fewer boxes than there are red cars, so the best play is to let one go.

Both sides of the road

Some streets have cars on the far side too. You can only cross at a zebra crossing, the stripes with the orange beacons, and crossing takes a minute like a step. Batch one side, then the other.

The controls

On a phone or tablet

Tap a car. The warden walks there by the shortest route, waits if the meter has not run out yet, and writes the ticket. Press and hold a car to see the route first: the dots show where you will walk, the label shows the minute the ticket lands, and any car that would drive off on the way is marked gone. Let go on the car to do it, or slide off to cancel. Tap a pavement tile to walk there, and use Wait a minute to stand still.

On a computer

• Click a car, or hover over it to see the route first.
• ← and → step along the pavement. ↑ or ↓ crosses at a zebra.
• Space writes a ticket on the car beside you. W waits a minute.
• Z undoes, R restarts, Esc opens the map.

Stars

Every level has three stars. The first is for filling the notebook. The second is for doing it in par, the fewest minutes it can be done in. The third is a challenge written on the level, such as crossing only once or leaving a particular car alone. Clearing levels opens the next ones on the map, and each street of levels opens once you have cleared most of the one before.

Questions