Sand Castle Hackathon & Me

Tide & Till

game dev

data-driven

Project overview

Cozy fishing and recipe game powered by real APIs

A cozy pixel-art island game where players fish in different ocean locations, collect marine life, cook recipes from real data, and sell dishes to customers.

Role

Game developer
gameplay systems
data integration

View project

Elsewhere

Date

2026

Field

Game

Stack

Game development, API integration, Pixel art, Economy systems, Recipe data

hackathon winner

real API data

cozy pixel art

Tide & Till

Context

Winner at the Sand Castle Hackathon during Toronto Tech Week.

The challenge was to make marine life and recipe data feel playable instead of informational.

The hard part

Tide & Till turns real species and recipe details into collection, crafting, and selling systems.

What it took

Created island fishing locations with different catches and collection incentives.
Used real marine life and recipe data to drive cooking, inventory, and customer sales.
Calculated recipe prices from ingredient rarity and nutritional value so the economy reflected the underlying data.

Outcome

Won the Know Idea track at the Sand Castle Hackathon during Toronto Tech Week with a complete cozy game loop using real marine life and recipe APIs.

GitHub

Awards &Recognition

Sand Castle Hackathon

Know Idea track