Polder

by tesseract

co-authored: @sauyon

Polders are tracts of land reclaimed from the sea by building embankments called dikes. This is an old technology that has been used for hundreds of years.

In our game, you are able to build embankments, with the aim being to channel or block oncoming water. If you can keep "Guy" (the smiley face) dry for long enough (about 20 seconds), you win. If Guy gets wet, you lose.

Controls:

- Click and drag on the screen to place down embankments
- Press Space to start the simulation, then again to toggle pause/play on the simulation

Bonus Achievements:

- Lose after winning
- Beat the impossible level (commented out in page source)

Mobile is unsupported

This game is a fluid simulation sandbox, using WebGL for both the fluid sim and the rendering.

We have used code from https://aeplay.github.io/WebFlood/ and https://github.com/dmlipinski/jsWAVES. https://lisyarus.github.io/blog/posts/simulating-water-over-terrain.html was also very helpful.

No LLMs were used to generate code or other assets.

Comments6

Avi20 Oct 2026, 00:10

Land reclamation is such an interesting choice for Old Tech! Building dikes to protect one little smiley face is a lovely premise. The 'lose after winning' bonus achievement made me smile too.

No Grapes Games20 Oct 2026, 00:31

I really like the liquid simulation, was fun to mess around with, so much so that i forgot about the objective for a while XD

Kiddoo20 Oct 2026, 00:36

It's organic, I love this !

erbol21 Oct 2026, 08:30

The game is incredibly addictive! Even though the gameplay itself is quite simple and easy to understand, I constantly wanted to keep playing and winning. I don't even know exactly why, but every time I played, I felt the urge to try again and achieve victory. Maybe it's because the game somehow challenges you without you even realizing it, and you automatically accept that challenge and keep playing. That's what makes the gameplay so engaging. I really love how such simple mechanics can motivate players to keep trying over and over again. Thank you so much for making this game! I genuinely had a lot of fun playing it!

givit-game-studios21 Oct 2026, 15:42

This was fun; I just wished there were more levels. Just one thing: I could not understand the use of the theme.

youpz21 Oct 2026, 16:38

Using dikes and land reclamation for Old Tech is a nice choice. Protecting one little smiley face gives the water simulation a clear purpose, and the "lose after winning" achievement made me laugh. Apparently twenty dry seconds don't buy Guy permanent safety.

If you have a moment, I'd appreciate a rating on my latest game, Robot Workshop.

Other games by @tesseract

★3.32

★3.42

★3.16