A superhero in a world where every pixel is real matter. Boil the sea into clouds and rain, tear chunks out of cliffs, and fight enemies made of lava, rock, ice and sand, plus a Magma Titan and a Storm Leviathan.
Cinder Tide is a 2D superhero sandbox on a coastal island at golden hour. Everything you see is simulated, cell by cell: rock, sand, earth, water, lava, fire, smoke, steam, cloud, snow, ice, glass, metal, brick and wood. Heat spreads, water boils, lava sets into obsidian when it meets the sea, loose pieces of the world break off as rigid bodies and shatter where they land, and nothing is left hanging in the air.
The water cycle is the showpiece: boil the sea with the Magma Lance and the steam rises in plumes, condenses into clouds, and rains back down to fill the sea again. You hear it too: the surf on the beach, the boiling, and rain and thunder that come from the clouds you made.
Your powers: - Magma Lance (hold left mouse): a heat beam that boils water, melts rock and carves. Hold right mouse to charge a Lava Blast instead. - Grip (point at rock, hold E, flick and let go): tears out exactly what is inside the circle at the cursor; it follows the cursor and flies off with your flick. Scroll to size the circle. - Rime Burst (hold F): freezes water, lava, steam, clouds and enemies. - Meteor Drop (Q in the air): dive and slam a shockwave into the ground. - Phase Dash (Shift): dash and carve a glowing tunnel through anything softer than metal or basalt.
Move with A and D, jump with Space, and press Space again in the air to fly (W A S D steers, C stops flying). H shows the controls, Esc pauses. Gamepads work too.
Every enemy is made of matter and breaks the way its material does, and each has a counter: - Magma crawler: a lava core in a rock shell. Hits spill real lava; Rime Burst sets it to obsidian, and then any blow shatters it into chunks. - Rock brute: basalt armour over a molten heart. Tear the plates off with Grip or crack them with Meteor Drop, then hit the heart. It guards the crawlers. - Frost wraith: a flying body of ice that shoots shards. The Magma Lance melts it to water and steam; leave it alone and it refreezes. - Sand swarm: motes of sand that scatter and re-form. Blast them apart, or fuse them to glass with heat and break the glass for good.
Powers combine: throw one enemy into another, freeze then Meteor Drop, lance a frozen enemy until it steam-explodes, dash through sand, blast into water for a scalding burst, and juggle enemies in the air. A style rank rewards variety, and each combo is named the first time you find it.
Two bosses, each a multi-phase puzzle: the Magma Titan in the volcano (cool its arms and break them off, then freeze and shatter its core) and the Storm Leviathan in the bay (boil its body away, freeze it, tear off its shell with Grip, then break its storm core).
Modes: Play (a guided tour, then waves on the town), Arena (three waves of mixed enemies), the two Boss fights, and Sandbox with no fail state.
The hero is animated entirely in code: planted feet that never slide, inverse kinematics, springs for lean, squash and stretch, and a cape and hair that react to the wind and the world.
Made by Patch. Code MIT. Sound is built from real recordings (Sonniss GDC bundle libraries, used under their games-only licence, and CC0 recordings), so the art licence is proprietary. Music: "An Untold Legend" by SkyleTheFrench (CC0). Rapier 2D (Apache-2.0) for rigid bodies. Inspired by MOLTYN by Hingston Digital and by Noita by Nolla Games; no code or assets from either.