The Blob Toy | Hacker News Reader

The Blob Toy

oimo.io

340 pointspicture38 comments

Reminds me of that sand game, I don't remember the name, maybe just "Sand" or "Falling sand" or similar? I know there were a bunch of different versions of it, with a lot of different materials you could draw on the screen, and they interacted with each other in very interesting ways; not just gravity, but there was also a "plant" material that would grow when in touch with water, fire would burn it, gas would explote, etc.

Anyone knows what I'm talking about?

This was many many years ago, but I would love to try it again, although I don't see myself spending the amount of time I did back in the day creating complex mechanisms.

The Powder Toy?

> The Powder Toy is a free physics sandbox game, which simulates air pressure and velocity, heat, gravity and a countless number of interactions between different substances! The game provides you with various building materials, liquids, gases and electronic components which can be used to construct complex machines, guns, bombs, realistic terrains and almost anything else. You can then mine them and watch cool explosions, add intricate wirings, play with little stickmen or operate your machine. You can browse and play thousands of different saves made by the community or upload your own – we welcome your creations!

The one I knew was called Powder Game[1]. I used to play it a lot in the elementary school computer room.

[1] https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

Can't edit on the app I'm using, but I found this implementation of the game I was talking about: https://www.silvergames.com/en/falling-sand. Not the original, but it has all the elements I remember, plus some interesting things like wind. And works decently on my phone.

I think you mean Burning Sand which is also the first thing I thought of when opening this.

https://siebn.de/games/bs

I still have a copy from 2006 saved on my computer of this and I'm pretty sure I originally got it from some sort of demo disk or something like that, maybe PC Gamer or Maximum PC - can't remember.

I was trying to look into it more and found this blog post from 2006 saying Burning Sand was a version of World of Sand and links to a Japanese site - https://www.kreativrauschen.com/blog/2006/03/29/burning-sand...

That site talks about Hell of Sand being another new version. That lead me to find this site that still hosts old .jar files of different versions of the game under the Falling Sand title - https://androdome.com/Sand/

This site I found on Reddit titled as "a modern version of the classic Hell of Sand" - https://www.projectsand.io/

There was also this game I remember playing back in school that is a lot alike - https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

I think it's fascinating that game sticks in people's mind so much, there wasn't much to it from what I recall.

Sandspiel.

https://sandspiel.club/

Are you thinking of https://chir.ag/stuff/sand/ ? It was a Java applet I came across long ago via Fark from a Japanese forum. I really liked the concept but it was in a tiny 300x400 view. So I decompiled, resized it to be larger, recompiled, and have been hosting it at above URL since forever.

I tried to find the original dev but still haven’t found them. Of course with Java applets not working anymore, it’s just a relic of bygone times.

There were a bunch of them. The one I remember was called "hell of sand falling game"

dust?

Other commenters have pointed out the original, but I just wanted to suggest checking out the game Noita, which is an exploration/roguelike set in a world that mechanically operates like the falling sand game.

They have one on the author website: https://oimo.io/works

I think the original was Falling Sand Game, then I remember a lot of very interesting clones. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling-sand_game

It also reminds me of Gish, which used blob mechanics for the main character. Great game.

oimo.io has a lot of really cool, often interactive, often 3D tech demos. Their recursive Conway's Game of Life was featured on HN before: https://oimo.io/works/life/

Hell, even their front-page looks amazing : https://oimo.io

By far the most impressive thing here, to me, is the fact that my phone does not heat up at all. Literally every other web based game or toy causes it to heat up. How is this possible?

Thank you for sharing. This is the most fun I've had on a webpage in a while!

Same! It’s amazing how many physical phenomena it accurately models: convection, boiling, pressure, temperature, capacitance, turbulence, tension, elasticity, gravity, and so on.

Our phones really are supercomputers.

Author has some nice examples on Twitter, e.g. https://twitter.com/shr_id/status/1679502736222740480

This kind of reminds me of an art thing from ~18 years ago called “ball droppings”. It was fun, I should dig that up.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060110050806/http://www.balldr...

All the projects of this person are amazing have a look at their website clicking on the top right of the page.

https://oimo.io/works

I like this. No goal, no score, no timer. You can just play around and see stuff happen. Reminds me a bit of the game "Liquid War" where you try to surround your opponent by circling in his tiny blobs and convert them to your color. Wonderful game.

Reminds me a bit of an early iOS game, a tiny sandbox, called Aquaforest.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vewtcd7nBLk&pp=ygUOYXF1YWZvcmV...

This reminds me of jellycar. the creator made some great YouTube videos recently about the physics of it. https://youtu.be/3OmkehAJoyo

There was an amazing physics sandbox game called Algodoo (formerly Phun), it’s been abandoned I think, but the last version is still playable and even available on iPad.

You can make the balloons bigger by long pressing

This is so much fun. One of the things both kids and adults find enjoyable. :)

A Very intuitive GUI. Was able to get up and running within seconds.

How come the performance is so smooth?

Works surprisingly well on mobile!

Is blob toy Turing complete?

give it an unlimited canvas, and tap a lot to simulate a constant flow, and you can chain gates per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics

Very cool.

Dope.

So fun!

Love it.

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