Crane Tips: Claw Timing and Picking the Easy Doll

Updated October 2026

Crane looks like a game of luck, the way real prize machines feel, but there is no luck in whether the claw grabs. The decision is made by a simple distance check at the instant you tap, and the claw goes exactly where you stopped it. That makes Crane a pure timing game with a few choices layered on top: which doll to go for, when a golden one is worth the trouble, and where on the floor the easiest targets sit. This guide covers all of them.

What happens when you tap

The crane runs back and forth along the rail at the top. A tap anywhere on the play area stops it on the spot, with no drift or slide, and the claw drops straight down. When it reaches the floor, the game looks for the nearest doll. If the claw is close enough, it grabs that doll and carries it up, and the points are added when the claw is back at the top. If no doll is close enough, you lose one of your three hearts and the claw comes back up empty.

"Close enough" works out to a horizontal distance of about 22 pixels between the claw and the centre of a doll. A doll's body is about 44 pixels wide, so the practical rule is easy to remember: the claw has to stop over the doll's body. Stopping over the gap between two dolls, or over a doll's outline, is a miss. These pixel figures are for a 390 by 844 phone; on other screens the dolls, the claw and the crane's speed all scale with the width of the play area, so the timing is the same everywhere.

Taps are ignored while the claw is moving down or up, so you cannot queue a second drop. Each attempt is a single decision.

Timing windows and the speed curve

The crane starts at 150 pixels per second and gains 12 pixels per second for every point on your score, with no ceiling: it is 270 at 10 points, 426 at 23 and keeps climbing for as long as you keep scoring. The new speed is applied each time the claw returns to the top, and the crane carries on in the direction it was travelling before you stopped it.

Combine that with the 44-pixel-wide target and you get the real difficulty: the claw spends about three tenths of a second over the middle of a doll at the start, about a sixth of a second at 10 points, about a tenth of a second at 23 points, and less than 40 thousandths of a second from 81 points on. Because that window keeps shrinking, every run ends sooner or later; holding your accuracy as it shrinks is the whole challenge of the late game.

The drop and the climb take time too. On the 390 by 844 phone screen we tested, the claw falls at 460 pixels per second and rises at 380, so a full drop and return takes about 2.7 seconds. Those speeds scale with the height of the play area, so the drop takes the same time on a small screen.

The easiest dolls on the floor

Five dolls sit on the floor at all times. Each one you catch is replaced by a new doll in a random free spot, at least a little more than a doll-width away from the others. Misses do not move anything, so the dolls you skipped will still be there next time.

Position matters more than most players realise. The crane turns around a little short of each wall, and a doll that sits about one and a half doll-widths in from a wall is right where the claw arrives, turns and passes back. Instead of crossing it once, the claw is over that doll on the way in and again on the way out, which can almost double the time you have to tap. At 23 points that is the difference between a tenth of a second and two tenths.

The opposite is also true. A doll pressed right up against a wall is partly beyond the point where the crane turns round, so the claw only reaches its inner edge. Leave those for last, or ignore them.

Golden dolls

About one new doll in five or six is golden, and a golden doll is worth three points instead of one. It is not any harder to grab: same size, same distance rule.

The interesting part is the speed. Since the crane speeds up by 12 pixels per second for every point, a golden doll speeds it up by 36 at once. Per point, though, the cost is exactly the same as three ordinary dolls, while you only take one risk with your hearts instead of three. So when a golden doll is in an easy spot, it is simply the best target on the floor. When it is jammed against a wall or the crane is moving very fast, a well-placed ordinary doll is still the safer choice.

Hearts and how runs end

You start with three hearts and there is no way to earn more. The run ends when the third miss happens. That means the game rewards consistency more than daring: a steady stream of careful catches beats a few daring attempts that spend your hearts early.

• Never tap out of impatience. The crane does not time out, and waiting for an extra pass costs nothing.
• Pick the target before the pass begins. Decide which doll you are going for as the crane heads toward it, not as it arrives.
• Use the turnaround. When the crane is about to reverse near a doll that sits just in from the wall, that is often the best moment in the whole cycle.

A timing method that works at speed

At 150 pixels per second you can react to what you see. By 23 points, at over 420, you cannot, because the claw crosses a whole doll in about a tenth of a second, and it only gets faster from there. The fix is rhythm. Watch one or two full passes and notice the beat of the crane against something fixed, such as a doll or the wall. Then tap on the beat, not on the sight of alignment.

1. Choose a doll near the middle and count the crane's arrival over it in time with its back-and-forth.
2. Tap on your count, slightly before the claw looks perfectly centred, to absorb your own reaction delay.
3. After each catch, the crane keeps its direction and speeds up a little, so adjust your count before the next attempt.

Practice plan

Spend a few runs in the early game, before ten points, tapping only on dolls near the turning points to feel the longer window. Then practise tapping on rhythm in the middle of the floor. Past 23 points the speed keeps rising with every catch, so the remaining goal is to keep your rhythm steady for as long as possible while the window keeps shrinking.

Your best score is saved on your device, and any score above zero can be submitted to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card.