Suez Canal game gives players chance to try moving the Ever Given ship

If you’ve been wondering all week how you would fare at trying to shift the Ever Given ship from the Suez Canal, you now have a chance to give it a go yourself thanks to a new game.

Suez Canal Bulldozer, created by designer Eric Wilder, allows players to take on the Sisyphean challenge of trying to move the 400m-long ship which has shut down one of the world’s busiest trade routes this week.

Despite days of work by engineers and salvage teams, the ship remains stuck, as of Sunday afternoon, delaying more than 300 boats attempting to pass through the Egyptian canal.

The controls of the game are simple - the left and right arrow keys are used to move a bulldozer forwards and backwards and the “J” key is used to perform an “action” to try to free the ship.

You can find the game here - but don’t get your hopes up about freeing the Ever Given, as the game will simply tell you what you should have already known… “It’s super stuck.”

Wilder told the video game website Kotaku that he was inspired by the explosion of jokes about the ship on social media earlier this week - especially those about the apparent ineffectiveness of the rescue attempts so far…

“I just thought the futility of the meme was hilarious,” he said. “Had to spin that into a game.”

While the Ever Given story is clearly funny, it also could have serious implications as a prolonged closure of the canal would cause delays in the global shipment chain and potentially affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East.

About 10 per cent of world trade flows through the canal and, according to official figures, some 19,000 vessels passed through it last year.

Of course, there’s nothing anyone sitting at home can do about that now so we might as well just enjoy the absurdity of it all...

More: Why the Suez Canal debacle pretty much sums up 2021