Orchard Catch: Fill the Crate, Dodge the Bees

Steer by the shadows

Press Play and the first apple drops straight into the basket, so you see a catch right away. On a phone, drag or tap anywhere on the orchard and the basket slides under your finger. On a computer, just move the mouse over the orchard; the basket follows without clicking. With a keyboard, hold the Left and Right arrows or A and D.

Every hanging fruit wobbles harder just before it lets go, and every falling object casts a shadow on the grass that grows darker as it gets closer. The shadow is where it lands, which matters most from crate 6 on, when wind starts blowing fruit sideways as it falls. Move to the shadow early instead of chasing the fruit itself.

The basket has a top speed, so a fruit on the far side of the orchard needs a head start. When you catch one, look straight back up at the canopy for the next wobble.

Fill the market crate

The crate panel shows one slot for every fruit the order needs, such as three apples, or two pears and two plums. Fruit the crate still needs glows as it falls and has a warm ring around its shadow. Each one you catch scores 100 points and flies into its slot. Any other fruit still scores 30.

A full crate pays a bonus of 100 points per slot, plus 10 percent for every crate you have already filled, and then a slightly bigger order arrives. Catch the first three apples in a row and the first crate is full: 300 points for the apples and a 300 bonus, 600 in all. Every fifth full crate also gives back a lost heart.

Golden apples are rare. They score 250 points and fill whichever slot has the most left, so they are worth a detour when nothing else is falling.

Hearts, hazards, and hard choices

You have three hearts. A fruit the crate needs that hits the grass costs half a heart. Catching a bee or a spiky burr costs a whole heart. A rotten apple, brown with dark spots, costs no heart but spoils the crate: every fruit already in it is lost. Hazards and spare fruit that fall past the basket cost nothing, and their shadows have a red dashed ring so you can spot them early.

From crate 3, two fruit can fall at the same moment far apart, and later three. Save the glowing one. Letting a spare fruit fall is free, while missing the needed one costs half a heart. Late in a harvest a drop can even hold two needed fruit on opposite sides; take the closer one and move on.

Burrs arrive with crate 2, rotten apples with crate 3, plums with crate 4, bees with crate 5, and wind with crate 6. Bees zigzag on the way down, but their shadow never lies. Some hazards drop right where your basket is waiting, so keep an eye on the canopy above you, not just on the next fruit.

Combos and power-ups

Every fruit you catch in a row adds to your combo. Every five catches add half to the multiplier, up to three times the points at 20, and the multiplier also applies to the crate bonus. Losing a heart or catching a rotten apple ends the combo; letting a spare fruit fall does not.

From crate 2, bubbles sometimes hang among the fruit. Catch one for a power-up: a wide basket for 9 seconds, a slow breeze that halves the falling speed for 7 seconds, or a fruit magnet that pulls nearby falling fruit into the basket for 9 seconds. A small bar under each active power-up shows the time left, and it blinks just before it runs out.

Small screens, breaks, and saved scores

On phones the orchard fills the screen in portrait, and in landscape the crate and score sit on either side of the field. Dragging on the orchard never scrolls the page. Pause freezes everything, including power-up timers, and opening help while paused keeps the harvest paused. Phone and landscape layouts were checked with browser touch emulation, not physical devices.

When your hearts run out, the results show your score, up to three stars (5,000, 20,000, and 60,000 points), crates filled, fruit caught, your best combo, and a tip. Only the Play again and Title buttons continue, so a stray tap cannot start a new harvest by accident.

Your best score, most crates, and best combo are saved in this browser; a harvest in progress is not. If you played the first version of Orchard Catch, a fixed 20-fruit harvest, its best score is kept and shown on the title screen as the classic best, because the scoring was different. If browser storage is blocked, the game says so and still plays.