I've started working on a new game that I would like to share. Currently it has no name, but you may be familiar with the genre "falling sand game."

Falling sand games

A falling sand game is a type of cellular automata, characterised by a dicrete grid of cells, where each cell represents some physical element like sand or water. Each frame the cells update according to some rules which emulate the real world, such as sand falling, water flowing, or more complex physical/chemical interactions.

The most common form of this game is a sandbox, where the player is free to experiment with all the different cell types, exploring interesting interactions, and creating their own objectives. A recent example you may be familiar is the roguelike, Noita. But more dear to my heart are the old flash sandbox games I grew up with such as DAN-BALL's Powder Game.

My objective

The fun thing about falling sand games is that usually the rules that govern them are extremely simple. But when enough simple things interact with each other you can get really interesting emergent behaviour. A classic example of this is Conway's game of a life, where each cell is governed by only four rules, yet the game can be used to perform complex calculations, or even simulate itself at a larger scale.

I think this is one of the main appeals to players, what happens when you mix X with Y? Not even the game's developer necessarily knows, which is exactly why I would like to try my hand at this kind of game. Mixing someone else's elements is one thing, but wouldn't it be more fun to do it with my own whacky elements?