Browser strategy game
Ice Fissures
Catch fish.
Crack the ice.
Stay dry.
Frozen lake
Practice against a computer or play another person online. Computer and lake choices are in Practice settings.
Practice settings
The lake and opponents are loading.
Checking who is on the ice…
River Journey
Cross the ice alone. Catches restore energy.
Getting the lake ready…
No install. No account needed. Free to play during the open alpha.
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Open alpha · River progress may reset
River Journey progress and saved games may be reset or become incompatible with future updates. Persistence is not guaranteed.
Read the short guide — simultaneous moves, shared energy, and safe catches.
Help test the game: Join a five-minute tracked playtest. Playing anonymously is still available.
Service status
Checking availability
Check the game for current online availability. Solo practice is available.
Have a friend's code? Join their lake
Guests play everything. Create an account to keep your matches across browsers.
Help start our community: arrange games and share feedback on Discord. Joining is optional.
Host
Switching hosts reloads the game and returns to Home. Each host keeps its own sign-in and online matches.
Checking online availability…
Find your favourite lake
Four lakes. Different ways to crack.
Start small on Mirror Pond, or stretch the rivalry across the open ice. The current demo includes every lake.
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Mirror Pond
A small, sheltered pond in the spruce. The ice is young and even: a good place to learn where cracks run.
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Frostmere
The anglers' home lake, where every winter's rivalry is settled. The shanty stove is always lit.
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Longwater
A long reach of open ice. The walk between fish grows, and so does the temptation to strike first.
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Glacier Reach
Meltwater off the glacier freezes hard between the boulders. The widest grounds, and the longest matches.
Choose your lake with Computer practice above. Meet the anglers.
Online record
My matches
Your online matches as this browser's guest, newest first.
Your next story starts on the lake. Find an opponent or invite a friend.
Review your completed matches here. Sign in to keep the same record when you change browsers.
Your data & research preferences
Off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time. Players under 18 must leave it off. A match is used only if both players turned this on.
This export covers retained game data only. Support correspondence, provider-held data, backups, recovery journals, service logs, browser-local data, authentication throttling, active matches and queues, and unreadable or orphaned store data remain outside it. It is not a complete personal-data response.
What we keep and why is in the privacy notice.
For account and data requests, use your shared account controls.
WHO'S ON THE ICE
The anglers
Meet the regulars of the winter lakes. Keep their character; choose your own winter kit.
A few other winter kits
Each angler keeps the skin and build that belong to their name and story. Choose coat, scarf, glove and boot colours, facial hair and accessories in Settings. On the ice each player's space glows blue or orange, whatever they wear.
Stories from the lake
Word travels around the shanty. The anglers do not always agree.
RIVER JOURNEY · THE CARTOGRAPHER'S DESK
The winter atlas
From Frostmere's lake, follow the river into uncharted country. Clearing a level unlocks its exits; fast travel stays open to every level you've already unlocked. Unreached places remain ?.
Complete a river crossing to choose an eligible destination.
Open alpha: World progress and saved journeys may reset or become incompatible as the game changes.
TRADING BEND · ERNIE'S COUNTER
Ernie's Trading Bend
One riverside store. Spend earned Fish Coins on permanent winter gear.
Browse stock by level. Clear its course to buy locked goods.
Ernie's winter gear
Clear a course to open its stock. Purchases are final and use Fish Coins.
DEVELOPMENT BUILD ONLY
Chatter review
Audition each beat as the game times it, and rate it. Reviews stay in this browser until you export them.
Make yourself at home
Settings
Set up your practice match, dress your angler, and make the lake comfortable to play.
A fresh lake, your way
Practice setup
Choose your lake and opponent on the Play page. These extra settings apply to practice matches; online matches use the host's rules.
Waiting for the game configuration.
Advanced practice: ice, rules & repeatable seeds
Ice profile
Choose the ice thickness. The same seed recreates the fish and chance outcomes.
Waiting for game configuration.
Rules and match length
Choose a rules preset, or tune a custom practice match.
Standard rules selected.
Match seed
Keep a seed to replay the same fish placement and chance outcomes, or generate a fresh one.
Seed 20260925 is ready.
How the ice changes
These apply to your next practice match; online matches use the host's rules. What each one does to a match is measured in the physics notes.
Fall attribution fixture
One intact support edge holds your angler above a loose section. Strike the double-outlined support cell to open it and see the resolver attribute a self-caused fall. This diagnostic fixture freezes additional fracture growth so the direct cause stays clear.
Fish relocation fixture
Reveal the marked full-energy strike. The resolver opens the fish’s cell, then relocates the fish to intact ice.
Your angler
Pick your angler, then choose a kit from the wardrobe. Your place on the ice stays blue.
Choices save as you make them. You can change your kit again whenever you like.
Earn these on the river, then wear any of them on any angler.
Check your river balance to see available Fish Coins.
Saved in this browser. Online, the other player sees your angler in your outfit.
Display, motion, and sound
Events return to the scene baseline.
Music develops as it plays from the game's seeded phrase generator and synthesized instruments.
These settings are saved in this browser. Sound starts after your next interaction.
Angler chatter
Decorative remarks from the anglers. Nothing they say changes the game.
How to play
Both anglers move, then each must strike. Their strikes resolve together on the ice as it stood before either strike. Movement and strike power share the round energy pool.
Fish beneath a deliberately struck cell score only if that cell leaves playable ice. If both anglers strike the same fish, each point rolls independently between them, so a catch or penalty can split across both scores. Collateral fish flee to empty intact cells; fish that cannot relocate cost the responsible strike half their value. A fish only ever surfaces where an angler could stand to catch it and stay on the ice; one the ice leaves out of reach swims to a cell where it can be caught.
Movement and strikes share the round energy pool. Strikes reach one hex. Anchors cannot be occupied or struck. Causing a fall counts as your foul, even if you fall yourself. Standard penalties scale with the lake's starting fish points, grow with each foul, and the third foul loses. Points deducted stop at zero; fallen anglers raft back to free ice for the next round. Custom matches also offer fixed penalties and strict first-foul loss. Every round each angler must hammer when a target is in reach, and a move keeps a point for the strike. Fish exhaustion and the round limit go to the higher score; ties draw. Strict matches also go to the count when no safe strike remains.
Practice opponents
Every opponent reads only the public board, never your hidden choice.
Greedy goes after the fish it can catch now:
- Reject a move or strike that makes either angler fall
- Maximize direct fish value
- Reduce expected waste
- Conserve energy and limit added structural damage
Sharp Greedy always takes its best cell; human-like Greedy weighs the walk and varies its choice.
Planner counts the rounds each angler needs to reach and break every fish's ice. It heads for the fish it can claim first, strikes with just enough energy to break through, spends spare energy cracking a fish it will come back for, and never plays a strike that yours could turn into its own fall.
Theorist plays by written rules and can say which rule made each choice. It catches a fish whenever that costs it no more valuable one and races for the fish you both want. When you are about to break a fish it can reach, it strikes the same cell for a single point: a fish goes to whoever struck its cell, by the coin when both did, so that point wins it half your catch. It checks each strike against the strikes you are likely to make.
Fair by design
Both anglers choose before either action is revealed, so neither gets a timing advantage.
The round recap and log explain score, ice, and fish changes after every reveal.
Frostmere
No active match
Lesson 1 of 7
Move
Choose an ice profile, then start a match.
Read the ice & controls
Tap a lit space to move. Hold a target and release to strike; slide off to cancel. Focus the board and use Q/W/A/D/Z/X for hex navigation; Enter commits; Space passes only when nothing is in reach to strike. Expand keyboard and screen reader controls for a list of legal cells.
Board as a table
| Cell | Ice | Angler | Fish |
|---|
Match, replay & round history
No profile selected.
Every round
No round resolved yet.