GRIDIRON

GRIDIRON is an ice-harvest game set on a scored pond in the January thaw of 1895.

You walk the frozen sheet with a breaking bar. A cake comes loose only where it meets open water, so you cut from the channel and the shore inward, opening the ice a cake at a time. The current runs east and carries every loose cake to the hoist, which houses it and adds its weight to the day. Break cakes in a steady rhythm to raise a multiplier, and cut a full column through to the north shore for a lane bonus.

The twist is that the ice is also your floor. You cannot break the cake under your own feet, and every cake you free leaves open water behind it, so a careless pattern strands you on a shrinking island or drops you through. Jump a one-cell gap to cross, warm up at the shanty before the cold drives you off, and read the spring holes that give way underfoot. Rain arrives on the third day and ends the season.

It was built as one self-contained HTML file with a canvas renderer and a cellular ice model. Breaking a cake opens a cell, a flow field routes loose cakes to the hoist, and the sheet is redrawn only when it changes. Sound is WebAudio only. It runs on mouse, touch and keyboard, fills the viewport at every pixel ratio, and uses the Arcade SDK for a tons-housed leaderboard and five achievements.