Game · JAMKADIUM 2026

Magnet Fishing

Untangle the river's clutter.

I turned CLUTTER into a calm fishing puzzle inspired by the Roblox fishing simulators I love. Made with Braxton Hauw; placed 2nd at JAMKADIUM 2026.

StackJavaScript · HTML5 canvas · Web Audio API

Watch the trailer ↓ Three rivers ↓

Play on itch.io ↗

The four strongest screens

Jump to 01, the clump

The pile. Clear it from the top down.

Jump to 02, the three rivers

The Old Bridge at sunset.

Jump to 03, the upgrades

The shop: five tools, three levels each.

Jump to 04, the bell

Dawn. The bell rings again.

Brief, jump to 01, the clump

Clutter, as a puzzle.

Whatever sticks to the magnet comes up tangled, and taking it apart is the game.

Role · year, jump to role, process and impact

Art direction + Build

With Braxton Hauw, who wrote the brief. October 2026.

Numbers, jump to 03, the upgrades

3rivers

5upgrades

15treasures

3bell parts

Three rivers, jump to the three rivers in 02

Morning, then sunset, then night.

The bell, jump to 04, the bell

Three parts, one in each river.

Look, jump to the look in 02

Arkadium glossy.

Picked from four art directions, then taken from day to night.

Build, jump to how it was made, in 05

No engine, no audio files.

JavaScript on one canvas; every sound is synthesized in code.

Award, jump to the impact

2nd place.

20 entries · JAMKADIUM 2026

Learned, jump to 05, what I learned

What I learned.

Upgrades have to be seen.
Split the goal so the next step is always close.

Role, process and impact

Role, process, impact and the context

Role: I led the art direction and interaction design, shaped the visual world and day-to-night arc, and guided implementation with Claude as my software engineering partner. Braxton Hauw wrote the design brief; I refined the game and made the final calls on what shipped.
Process: I chose a look from four art directions, made the rope stronger instead of longer so each river could be its own scene, split the bell into three parts, and playtested in the browser before submitting.
Impact: Placed 2nd among 20 entries at JAMKADIUM 2026. Magnet Fishing is playable in the browser on itch.io.

Role: Art direction + Build
Team: Lucy Liu (art direction, interaction design, implementation with Claude); Braxton Hauw (design brief)
Context: JAMKADIUM 2026 · Arkadium's casual game jam at the NYU Game Center · theme: CLUTTER
Year: 2026
Tags: JavaScript
HTML5 Canvas
Web Audio API
Game Jam
Casual Game

01The clump

Clutter you take apart, one piece at a time.

The magnet pulls up one tangled clump of junk, and you clear it from the top down.
A piece comes free only when nothing above it overlaps it, so every pile is a small puzzle.
Each piece goes in one of three bins: treasure for the Collection Book, scrap for coins, recycling for a small bonus.

The brief

I love playing fishing simulators on Roblox, so I read CLUTTER as an invitation to make a calm, relatable game. Braxton Hauw's brief started with magnet fishing; I made the tangle of river finds into a puzzle players can sort at their own pace.

The rules

Top down. A piece is removable when nothing above it overlaps it. Undo puts the last piece back.
Better tools. Rusted pieces need stronger work gloves, and grimy ones need the cleaning brush; without it, a crusty lump just sells as scrap.
No timers. Mouse only, about ten minutes from the first throw to the bell, and the game saves after every sale and purchase.
Optional goals. Some piles offer a goal for the first four pulls, worth 15 extra coins. Missing one costs nothing.

Throw, untangle, bring the bell home.

Download video

A pile at the Shallows from throw to sale, the rope that opens the Old Bridge, then the bell coming up at the Deep Canal. A 46-second edited trailer, captured frame by frame from the game playing scripted takes from set save states. Sound on: the music and effects are the game's own, synthesized in the browser.

Magnet Fishing's pick screen at the Shallows: a tangled pile of gears, a padlock and chain on wet sand, with the Treasure, Scrap and Recycling bins and the Undo and Haul it in buttons on the right — The ShallowsA morning pile on the sand. The bins count what you sort, and Haul it in ends the pull.

Pick screen at the Old Bridge: a larger pile of gears, bolts, a green bottle, a tyre and a tangle of blue wire on sunlit paving stones, with an optional goal to recycle 2 in the first 4 pulls — The Old BridgeA bigger pile on the steps, with an optional goal: recycle two in the first four pulls.

02Three rivers

Each river is its own place and time of day.

The Shallows in the morning, the Old Bridge at sunset, the Deep Canal at night in JAMKADIUM's purple and yellow.
Each one has its own scene, pick-screen backdrop and title card, and the music and river sounds change with it.
Rope Strength opens the next river, and each one has bigger piles worth more.

Stronger, not longer

The first plan was one map, where a longer rope reached deeper water. On that map the canal overlapped the other rivers, so I made the rope stronger instead of longer. Each river could then be a scene of its own, and the rope became the key to the next one.

Piles grow from 6 to 8 pieces at the Shallows to 9 to 11 at the Old Bridge and 11 to 13 at the Deep Canal, and finds at the canal are worth one and a half times as much.

The look

I picked the look from four art directions: Arkadium glossy, with soft gradients, thick outlines and bright, rounded buttons, set in Baloo 2 and Nunito. Then I shifted its palette river by river, from day to night, so the game gets later as it gets harder.

Three rivers, in order

Morning, then sunset, then night.

LEVEL 1

The Shallows, morning. Old twine and a small magnet. Piles of 6 to 8 pieces.
LEVEL 2

The Old Bridge, sunset. Opens at Rope Strength 1. Piles of 9 to 11.
LEVEL 3

The Deep Canal, night. Opens at Rope Strength 2. Piles of 11 to 13, worth the most.

03Upgrades

Every upgrade shows on the tool.

Five tools, three levels each: Magnet Strength, Rope Strength, Work Gloves, Cleaning Brush and Metal Detector.
The magnet grows and turns gold; the rope goes from old twine to a red-twist, a sailor's and a golden braid.
Each shop card shows what the next level does in numbers before you buy it.

I asked for upgrades you could see. A stronger magnet is drawn bigger in the angler's hand, and the rope is drawn as a braid whose colours change at each level, so what the coins bought is on screen every time you throw.

Magnet Strength. Bigger clumps, two more pieces a level, and heavier finds: radios, bikes, a shopping cart.
Rope Strength. Opens the next river. The golden braid is strong enough to lift the town bell itself.
Work Gloves. Pull off rusted pieces, from lightly rusted to anything at all.
Cleaning Brush. Scrub off grime to see what is inside, instead of selling a crusty lump.
Metal Detector. Buried treasure glints through the pile, then turns up more often.
The shop opens with the rivers. The gloves and the brush arrive at the Old Bridge, the detector at the Deep Canal.

The magnet at levels 0 to 3, growing from a small red horseshoe to a large glowing gold one, above four rope coils: plain brown old twine, a cream braid with red twists, a blue and white sailor's braid and a gold and purple golden braid — Four looks per toolMagnet Strength from level 0 to 3, and Rope Strength's four braids, rendered with the game's own drawing code.

The shop at the Deep Canal with 820 coins: Magnet Strength, Rope Strength, Work Gloves, Cleaning Brush and Metal Detector cards, each with its level dots, the next level's effect in numbers and a Buy button — The shopAt the Deep Canal: Magnet Strength reads 13 to 15 pieces becoming 15 to 17, and the golden braid still needs 480 more coins.

04The bell

The bell comes back in three parts.

The Lost Town Bell broke into three parts, one in each river: the clapper, the yoke and the bell.
They surface in order, and the Town Bell card in the corner fills in as each one is found.
Rebuild it and the ending plays at dawn in the town square, where the bell rings again.

The first version had the whole bell waiting at the very end. I split it into parts so every river has a reason to visit and the goal is never more than one step away. The line at the top of the screen says where the next part is, or what it still takes to lift it.

The Collection Book has fifteen pages, and the three bell parts are marked Bell 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 among them. The first part needs a stronger magnet, and the bell itself needs the golden braid.

The Deep Canal with every tool at its top level: the angler holds a glowing gold magnet on a golden braid, the hint reads The bell is right below you. Throw!, and the Town Bell card shows the clapper and yoke, 2 of 3 parts — 2 of 3The golden braid on, and the hint: “The bell is right below you. Throw!”

The Collection Book, 11 of 15 found: a brass door key, hotel teaspoon, carousel token, swimming medal, wind-up tin robot, brass compass, wedding ring, toy train engine and copper teapot, with the Bell Clapper and Bell Yoke marked Bell 1/3 and 2/3, and the third bell part still a question mark — The Collection BookFifteen pages; the bell parts are marked 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3.

The ending at dawn in the town square: the rebuilt bell with its clapper and yoke, confetti, and a card reading The town bell rings again! with treasures found 15 of 15, 31 clumps untangled, 24 junk recycled and 11 minutes on the river — Dawn“Clapper, yoke and bell, back together after 68 years under the river.”

05Reflection

Show progress where the player is already looking.

Magnet Fishing is playable in the browser on itch.io.

Play on itch.io ↗

How it was made

Stack

Plain JavaScript modules drawing on one 960 x 600 canvas, with no engine and no dependencies. Every number in the game, from item values to upgrade prices, lives in one data file. The music, the river ambience and every sound effect are synthesized at runtime with the Web Audio API; there are no audio files.

AI use

Claude (Anthropic) adapted my artwork into SVG and generated the game code, item text and documentation. OpenAI Codex helped with testing, bug fixes and code improvements. No image-generation model was used, and the game's credits list every piece.

Testing

29 automated tests cover the pile rules, the tutorial clump, the rivers and the bell parts. Browser playtests by AI testers before the deadline caught a sale that paid out about fifteen times over, fixed before submission.

Upgrades have to be seen.

A number going up in a menu is easy to miss. Drawing the bigger magnet and the new braid in the angler's hand means every throw shows what the coins bought.

A problem with the map became the structure.

A stronger rope started as a fix for a canal that overlapped the other rivers. It gave each river its own scene and turned the rope into the key between levels.

Split the goal so the next step is always close.

One bell at the end of three rivers was too far away to pull anyone forward. Three parts, one per river, keep the next one in sight.