How Magnet Power-Ups Work

The magnet is the most popular power-up in collection games and the one most often implemented in a way that makes it useless. The difference between a good magnet and a bad one comes down to about four decisions.

The numbers

190 units is roughly a third of the screen width on a landscape layout, or about two platform gaps in a climbing game. That scale is chosen so the magnet meaningfully changes what you can reach without making position irrelevant.

Distance falloff

Pull strength is not constant across the radius. It scales linearly from full strength at the centre to zero at the edge: pull = strength × (1 − distance / radius).

This matters for feel. A constant-strength pull snaps items toward you the instant they cross the radius boundary, which looks mechanical and reads as unnatural. Falloff produces a gentle drift at the edge accelerating into a rush as items get closer, which is both more legible and more satisfying.

Axis asymmetry

In falling-object games the pull is applied at full strength horizontally and at 70% vertically.

The effect is that the magnet is good at dragging items sideways into your lane and poor at arresting their fall. That is a deliberate limitation — a magnet that could stop items falling would trivialise a catcher game entirely, because you could simply hold everything in the air.

It is also more intuitive than a uniform pull. Players quickly develop the correct instinct that the magnet extends their horizontal reach rather than giving them more time.

The hazard-immunity rule

The single most important implementation decision, and the one that determines whether players use the power-up at all.

Every collectible record carries a magnetizable flag. Food has it. Hazards do not. The attraction loop skips anything without it.

Without that rule, a magnet activated in a crowded field will eventually drag a bomb into you. Once that happens twice, a player learns to stop using magnets — at which point the power-up occupies a design slot and delivers nothing.

With it, a magnet is always safe. The only cost of using one is the opportunity cost of not saving it for a better moment, which is a much more interesting decision.

Using a magnet well

1. Spend it on clusters, not singles. A magnet on a cluster collects six items; on a single item it collects one. That is roughly an 80% difference in value.
2. Use it to justify a faster route. Its real value is that a route passing near items collects them, which lets you take a straighter line.
3. Use it to cover combo gaps. In climbing games its radius spans about two platform gaps, which keeps a chain alive through transitions that would otherwise break it.
4. Be careful in ordered games. In Taco Trail, a magnet pulls whatever is nearest — including out-of-sequence items that will break your trail streak.

That last point is the one exception to the rule that power-ups can never hurt you. The magnet does not damage you, but in a game with an ordering requirement it can cost you a bonus. Taco Trail's page flags this explicitly for that reason.

The magnet as a whole game

Food Magnet Rush asks what happens if the magnet is not a power-up but the core mechanic.

There it becomes a permanent ability with a charge meter: a 300-unit radius, 700 units per second of pull, draining at 34 per second and refilling at 17. That two-to-one ratio means you can pull for about three seconds out of every nine.

The basket is narrower than in the equivalent game without a magnet — 82 units against 100 — because the magnet compensates for reach. A wide basket plus a magnet would remove positioning from the game entirely, which is a good illustration of how a strong mechanic has to be paid for elsewhere.

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