SAND GAMES.

"Kind of like mine craft if notch was cooler."

I'm sure by now every single person who is manifested in some form or another has herd of  the Video game known as Minecraft. In case you live on a different dimensional plane then most Video game players do here is what it is in short: You build things. Mine things. And craft things out of volumetric pixels or voxels. there feel better? 

 Another sub genre of  Video games I can't help but be reminded of when talking about block-based-crafting Video games are "sand games" or "physics games" and I'm not talking about non-freebase here. These Video games are usually open ended and completely sandbox. The similarity to the Re-popularized Crafting/building sub genre comes in to play as a result of the creation element and their open ended nature. The user is free to do as they please. There is one game particularly that I really just like messing around in once in awhile:Powder game

This is a very good example of this "sand game" sub genre. In game there is a display of panel of what I would call elements or materials or what ever.

 

you can choose any of them and place them in the world. you choose sand, and you can place sand But, where the Building in a game made from blocks differs from this is the fact that each individual pixel of sand has physics applied to it so your mouse click manifests sand in a pleasing stream of pixels. (note: you can quote me on that, "a pleasing stream of pixels".) So placing sand in the world r what ever you want to call it, actually feels like terraforming a planet and not just placing some sort of condensed essence of dirt-brick. Not that that placing blocks int charming as all hell.

But, creating worlds is not all you can do. This Video game allows you to spawn small men to run around and jump and do all sorts of wacky things. Not only this but, many of the materials have varying effects: Clone for example: What ever material touches it comes out of the touched area in a fountain of amazingness. Virus: takes over any material and turns it into its self. You can also fire lasers and light gasoline on fire with them and explode c4 with fire lit from a fuse. A very sweet thing I discovered is (spoilers I guess):

By adding virus to clone it makes a really strange pulsating material with clone running through it in waves. when you fire lasers in to the clone waves when they pass by, you will end up with a liquid that shoots lasers. The fact that, that's probably completely emergent and not programed purposely makes me very happy.

Any way there are many differing variations on this sub genre of sand pixel physics games and what not. But what I'm really extremely excited for is the coming of the game: pixel sand, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter a month or two ago. So please check that out. It's basically Powder game but the best thing ever instead of the second best thing ever (Rampart).

Here are some links to a few example games:

http://www.scuzzstuff.org/oe_cake/ (amazing and non pixel)

http://www.pixelgames.com/game/330/SandTest.html (very basic but nice looking)

http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/(complex still nice looking)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/564944684/pixel-sand (BEST THING)