Wooden Vest

Prospectus

Wooden Vest is a colorful blocky lumber tycoon. Spin the Axe Roulette for rare axes, place them on stumps and watch them chop wood on their own. Carry the wood to the chipper, turn it into money at the sawmill and reinvest in faster axes, better stumps, new floors in the sky and a helper who works for you. Open wood chests, combine stumps, fuse four axes into a rarer one and enchant them with golden, frozen, toxic or void power. Your island keeps earning even while you are away.

How it plays

Move with WASD (on a phone, the on-screen joystick), run with Shift and jump with Space. Turn the camera by dragging with the mouse or a finger, or with the arrow keys; the mouse wheel zooms, and ' or Q locks the mouse to the camera. Walk up to a station and press E (or tap its button) to use it. Spin the roulette, buy an axe, put it on a stump, pick up the wood from the crate, throw it into the chipper and step on the green pad to collect your money. Keys 1-9 pick an item from the hotbar, Tab opens the backpack, M mutes the sound and Esc opens the options.

Opening an account with this game takes one press: Open the holding, above, and it loads on this page itself — nothing downloads and no form stands between you and the first decision. It is drawn for a landscape (wide) screen and takes its instructions from mouse, keyboard or touch, as the game prefers. The file is drawn wide, for a landscape screen — turn a phone sideways, or let a tablet or desktop give it room to breathe. If a fullscreen control is offered, take it — a growing enterprise deserves the whole desk.

Analyst's notes for management holdings

• Fix the queue before the product. In management games the line out the door is rarely a quality problem; it is a staffing and layout problem wearing a quality costume.
• Hire for the hour you cannot cover. Your own attention is the scarcest employee in any management sim — spend money wherever it buys your attention back.
• Read the complaint, not the rating. Averages hide the one broken station that is quietly taxing every customer; the written grumble names it for free.

Wooden Vest — questions from the readership

What does it cost to open Wooden Vest?

Nothing, at any point. The holding is free from the first click to the last upgrade — no account to open, no download to wait for, no paywall filed anywhere in its pages. The advertising around this page is what pays the bookkeeping.

What kind of game is Wooden Vest, exactly?

We file it on the Management shelf of the ledger. It is a browser game through and through — the prospectus above is the publisher's own summary of what the game asks of you and what it gives back.

Can I play Wooden Vest on a phone or tablet?

Yes — it runs in the browser on phones and tablets just as it does on a computer. The file is drawn wide, for a landscape screen — turn a phone sideways, or let a tablet or desktop give it room to breathe.

Is there anything to download or install first?

Nothing at all. Wooden Vest is an HTML5 game: press the open button and it loads on this very page, and closing the tab leaves nothing behind on your device.

Closing entry

Finished the audit, or still mid-season? The full Management shelf is one click away — One hundred and eighty-one exercises in being in charge: rotas, stock, queues, budgets and the eternal discovery that the bottleneck was you. Management games for people who enjoy a tidy operation.