Created by R74N, not Neal. Has been live on http://sandboxels.r74n.com as an independent project for several years. Just now hosted by Neal. Important distinction.

Falling sand games bring back a lot of nostalgia. If you're interested, you should check out dan-ball's version which is one of the progenitors of the genre. Over the years he's added a ton of features, elements, and interactions, to the point where it now has a fluid mechanics simulation for air!

https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

Note to self: Do not open neal.fun links anymore…

As a fan of both Neal and R74n this was an unexpected collaboration!

I can highly recommend building your own falling sand simulator. It's really fun to see how such simple rules create emergent behaviors. Sand pixels try to move down, then diagonally down. Water does the same, then tries sideways.

Me messing around with it eventually resulted in a game I'm now working on full time (think Noita meets Factorio): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2764460/Sandustry/

Minecraft introduced me to the idea of tuff. This gives me more ways to play with it.

I still don't know what it is.

for context, this game was first built in 2019 by R74N. it looks like neal.fun has taken over maintaining/hosting its web version, while the Steam version continues development

https://sandboxels.r74n.com/new-home

Wow, this is... kinda like the Noita engine but without the exploding yourself every 5 seconds. Probably going to spend the next several hours getting zero useful RL tasks done now, thanks again Neal.

Here's the official announcement about the move to neal.fun:

https://sandboxels.r74n.com/new-home

It doesn't explain why though, which is the most obvious question.

My geology classes certainly did not mention sedimentary layers consisting of glass, quicklime, ash, salt, gingerbread, melted butter, and toast, from bottom to top.

See also: The Powder Toy (https://powdertoy.co.uk/)