The lights
Tap a crossing and its lights swing through amber to the other road. Cars waiting at red slowly fume, and a red puff means a honk is coming.
Old Wilf has hung up his lollipop. Take over the lights, the zebras and the roundabouts of a sunny seaside town, and keep every driver too busy to honk.
Every shift is one screen of streets seen from above. Motors roll in from the edges, and each one has somewhere to be.
Tap a crossing and its lights swing through amber to the other road. Cars waiting at red slowly fume, and a red puff means a honk is coming.
Ducks, schoolchildren and a granny with a tartan trolley gather at the kerb. Raise the lollipop and every car waits while they cross.
No lights up on the Rise. Each entry has a Give Way sign: turn it to Go and the ring makes room, turn too many and it locks solid.
Old Wilf trains you in the yard behind the depot first. After that the duty roster sends you across town, six shifts at a time.
One crossing between the stalls and the fountain.
ice-cream vansZebras, school buses and a family of ducks.
walkersTwo crossings on the quay road.
ambulancesGive Way signs instead of lights.
ring lockEvery car that crosses town without stopping adds to the wave, and a long wave fills Old Wilf's biscuit tin faster. Let one driver sit and stew, though, and the wave is gone.
Shifts pay in biscuits. Spend them on a little help, two pieces at a time, and on two upgrades that stay fitted for good.
“Watch the puffs, not the cars. A driver goes red long before he honks.”Old Wilf, forty years on the lollipop