The Falling Sand Game

The Falling Sand Game is a real gem. It's more of a webtoy than a game (I know, I hate that phrase, too, but that's what it is!). As you may have noticed, I've been pretty into the types of games where you set something up and then watch it run, the physical simulation type things. I guess it makes sense - I was a physics major, after all!

Anyways, this is a lot of fun to play; unfortunately, I have no idea who to credit for it. Sometimes it's known as World of Sand, too; the Falling Sand Game website has the following to say about it:

"Falling Sand Game", also "World of Sand", (2005) is a Java applet first found on the Dofi Blog via Fark thread, later enlarged and rehosted by Chirag Mehta. The game has been popular on community link sites like Digg and Delicious and involves four main falling particles: sand, water, salt, and oil. Each of these particles have special properties that can be manipulated; among these include burning, desiccating, growing, eroding, and more. Along with these four, main particles are auxiliary environmental manipulators: Wall, Fire, Plant, Spout, Cera (or wax), ???, and Eraser. By putting these together, one can thoroughly enjoy the modeling and construction of very complex structures and systems. There is an additional special feature that can be turned on, off, or told to remain in place. This is called the namekuji. In japanese, "namekuji" means slug, naturally for the properties of a slug when salt is poured onto it. Several different versions exist, varying from applets with zombies, or human bodies, that have their own unique properties to applets where auxiliary environmental manipulators have additional properties.

So anyways, give it a go. When you've played the original, you might also want to check out Pyro Sand, Pyro Sand 2, and Hell of Sand, my favorites of the mods.

By the way, all of these games were built with Processing, which I've been pushing quite a bit lately - it's just such a nice environment to quickly bang out cool Java applets with. FYI, the source for Pyro Sand has been released, and "You're welcome to use it in whatever way you please. " according to this forum post. At some point I may try to find the time to refactor this code a little bit and release a more OO version with some explanation of what's going on.

Blob Game - Liquid2

Liquid2 is something that I hacked together in Processing as I was testing a spatial partitioning algorithm for another game I'm working on. I got the algorithm working (without it, you couldn't have nearly as many particles on screen), and the thing looked pretty cool so I fashioned a simple little (demo of a) game out of it. Check it out, it might amuse you. Source code is available on that page, too - follow the links under the game.

You have to accept a security dialogue before you can play - this just lets your browser use OpenGL for faster graphics display. It's safe, signed by Sun Microsystems (the dudes that made Java), so I hope that doesn't discourage you from giving it a play.

Controls are simple - just hold the mouse button to repel particles. Particles "eat" each other in a way, and the goal is to not let all your particles get eaten by another color. Pay attention at the beginning of each round, it will tell you which color you are supposed to protect. As time goes on, things get crazier, so be careful. Be aware, the "goopiness" of the blobs changes randomly round to round, so some will be easier than others.

There are certainly some problems with this game, but hey, let's pull a Google and call it beta. Worst comes to worst, think of it as a lava lamp on your screen! Suggestions are welcome, although I can't promise I'll have time to implement them for a little while!

Zombie 4

This game is sweet - make sure you've got a Java Runtime Environment installed. This is one of the few 3-D shooters available as a web game, and it doesn't disappoint. Okay, it's not Half Life 2, but it's got a simple charm and great gameplay. This was developed by a guy named John G in Processing (you can find him in the forums if you have suggestions for the next game), which is a fantastic environment to write Java games in because it makes Java graphics effortless; for anyone that has ever struggled with Swing/AWT, this is an awesome achievement, and it even does 3D! If you're interested in making web games, you should definitely check it out. It's more flexible than Flash, and as free open source software, the price is right!