Falling Sand

Play the Falling Sand Game Online

Falling Sand is a free pixel sandbox. Pick an element, drag across the box, and it pours out of your finger or mouse grain by grain. Sand slides into heaps, water finds the lowest point, oil floats on top, and fire climbs up through anything that will burn. Nothing is scripted. Every grain follows a few small rules, and the fun is in what happens when you mix them.

There are 17 elements, from plain sand and water to lava, acid, salt and gunpowder, and they react with each other in about the ways you’d expect. Water poured on lava turns into stone and a cloud of steam. Acid eats through almost anything. Ice melts by a flame, and it slowly freezes the water around it. Seeds grow into plants with little flowers on top.

If you don’t know where to start, load one of the three scenes. Hourglass is a slow, calm trickle of sand. Volcano has lava spilling down a mountain toward a forest and a lake with oil on it. Garden has a pond, a fence, sprouting plants and a steam cloud that rains as it cools.

How to Play

1. Pick an element from the palette. Each one has its own swatch and name.
2. Drag on the box to pour it. Hold still to keep pouring loose things like sand, water or fire.
3. Change the brush with the minus and plus buttons, or the mouse wheel. A size of 1 places single grains.
4. Pause to freeze everything, then press Step to move forward one frame at a time and see exactly what happens.
5. Speed cycles between half speed, normal, 2× and 3×.
6. Clear empties the box. If you didn’t mean it, press Undo on the message that pops up.
7. Scenes loads a starting scene, an empty box, or your save slot.

On a computer you can also erase by dragging with the right mouse button.

Every Element and What It Does

• Sand: falls and piles up into slopes. It sinks slowly through water and oil.
• Water: flows sideways and fills containers. It puts out fire, turns lava into stone and dissolves salt.
• Wall: solid bricks that never move. Acid can’t eat them, which makes walls the best thing for building containers.
• Stone: heavy rubble that drops straight down and barely slides. Lava and water make it too.
• Wood: a solid that stays where you draw it. It catches fire slowly and burns for a long time.
• Fire: rises and flickers, then dies out into smoke. It lights wood, oil, plants and seeds, and sets off gunpowder.
• Oil: a liquid lighter than water, so it floats on top. It catches fire very easily and burns fast.
• Lava: a thick, slow, glowing liquid. It lights anything that burns, melts ice and turns water into steam while cooling into stone.
• Ice: a solid that melts back into water near fire, lava, steam or salt. Left in water, it slowly freezes the water next to it, a few layers deep.
• Plant: grows into any water it touches and burns easily.
• Seed: falls like sand, then sprouts into a stem with a flower once it touches water or rests on sand.
• Acid: a liquid that eats almost everything, including sand, wood, plants, salt, ice and, slowly, metal. It gets used up as it works. It can’t eat walls.
• Salt: falls like sand. It dissolves in water to make salt water, which is heavier and sinks under fresh water. It also melts ice.
• Gunpowder: falls like sand and explodes when fire or lava touches it. Blasts light nearby gunpowder, so piles go off in a chain.
• Metal: a solid that fire can’t hurt and explosions can’t break. Acid eats it, but very slowly.
• Smoke: drifts up and fades away.
• Steam: rises, and as it cools, some of it falls back down as rain.
• Eraser: removes whatever it touches.

Combos to Try

• Lava + Water: pour a lava stream into a pool and watch it hiss into stone and steam.
• Fire + Oil on Water: spread a thin layer of oil on a lake, then drop one flame on it.
• Gunpowder Chain: draw a long line of gunpowder and light one end.
• Steam Rain: fill the top of the box with steam and wait for it to rain onto your garden.
• Salt Melts Ice: sprinkle salt on an ice block and watch holes melt through it.
• Acid Tank: fill a wall container with acid, then drop sand, wood and metal into it. The wall holds and everything else dissolves.
• Frozen Lake: draw a small ice cube in the middle of a pond and let it grow.
• Fireproof Box: build a metal box around a wood house, then set fire to the outside.
• Hourglass Race: load Hourglass, set speed to 3× and see how long the sand takes to run out.

Tips

• Use a small brush for detailed building and a big one for floods and sandstorms.
• Pause before a big reaction, then step through it frame by frame to see how it works.
• Walls are the only acid-proof material, so use them for anything that has to hold acid.
• Oil floats, so a spark on top of a lake can set the whole surface alight.
• Save a build you like before you blow it up. You can load it again as many times as you want.
• If the box gets crowded, the eraser with a large brush clears space fast.