Sand
the calm oneFalls, piles into slopes, sinks through water and oil. Almost nothing bothers it.
- Lava: sand floats on it. Lava is heavier.
- Acid: gets eaten.
- Explosions: blown away.
Twenty-six things you can paint, nine more they turn into, and everything that happens when they meet. Every number here comes straight out of the game's code.
Learn these and you can guess what most things will do before you try them.
Powders sink through lighter liquids. Liquids sort themselves by weight, so oil ends up on water and salt water ends up under it.
Fire, embers, steam and methane rise. Steam and methane even bubble up through water and loose sand.
Hot is what lights, melts, boils and detonates. It only counts when touching side-by-side or above/below. Corners don't count, except for Fuse.
A lone flame floats up and dies in a blink. Next to fuel it stays put, keeps burning and spreads.
Acid and explosions can't touch Wall or Clone. The Eraser still removes anything.
Fire, frost, plants and chain reactions spread at most one pixel per tick. You can watch a fuse burn or a fire creep across oil instead of it all happening at once.
Weight decides who ends up on top. A powder sinks through any liquid lighter than it. A liquid slides under any lighter liquid. Things on the same rung just mix.
In the same order as the tray on the left of the game. The swatches use the game's own colours and grain.
Falls, piles into slopes, sinks through water and oil. Almost nothing bothers it.
Falls like sand, but it's busy.
Anything hot touching it sets off a small blast. Each pop throws fire and embers that set off the next grains, so a trail of it goes off like a string of firecrackers.
Flows like sand. Once a grain has sat still for a moment it hardens into set concrete: darker, solid, doesn't move.
Drinks any water it touches. The water disappears and the soil darkens into wet soil.
Drifts down slowly, flutters sideways, and is the lightest powder in the game. It never sinks.
Land it on wet soil and it sprouts a stem 6 to 14 pixels tall, topped with a flower in one of five colours.
Spreads out flat and fills whatever it's in. It reacts with more things than anything else.
Lighter than water, so it always ends up on top. It catches fire more easily than anything else, and flames on oil sit and burn instead of floating off. A lit slick burns across its whole surface.
Any heat and it goes off with a big blast. It doesn't burn, it explodes.
Oil that's already on fire. It flows and floats like oil, with flames dancing on top and balls of flame rolling off it, and it slowly burns itself away.
The heaviest liquid. It drops through open air at full speed but creeps when it spreads or sinks. It's permanently hot, so it lights, melts, boils or sets off everything it touches, and it never cools down on its own.
The fire extinguisher. It gets used up as it works, sometimes puffing into steam, and slowly evaporates on its own.
Every touch has a chance to delete what it's touching, and every bite has a chance to use the acid up. A small puddle only goes so far.
Stays exactly where you paint it. Doesn't burn, melt, dissolve or blow up. Build containers, ceilings and bridges with it.
Grows into still water — a patch, not the whole pond. Drop a little plant in a pond and it spreads about 14 cells around where it was planted, staying under the surface, then stops; plant more sprigs to grow more. A falling stream, or a puddle a stream keeps topping up on it, won't make it grow, so it can't climb up to a spigot.
Wax doesn't catch fire itself. Near heat it melts into molten wax, which drips and oozes, then hardens back into wax when it cools and settles.
Solid, stays put, completely harmless until heat touches it. Then the whole block goes off at once: the biggest explosion in the game.
Heat on any of its eight neighbours, corners included, turns a piece of fuse into flame, which lights the next piece. Draw a line, light one end, watch it run.
Freezes the water touching it, a little at a time. Leave one ice cube in a pond and eventually the pond is ice.
A lone flame floats up and fizzles out in a blink. Touching fuel it stays, keeps burning and spreads into the fuel, one pixel at a time.
A drifting gas that rises and bubbles up through water and sand. Any heat makes it pop, including lava's sparks and burning napalm. A room full of it goes off in a rolling chain, each pop lighting the next.
Drips water into any empty space next to it, forever.
Pumps oil out into any empty space next to it, forever. Put one near a torch for an oil fire that never ends.
Throws flames into the empty space around it, and is hot itself, so it melts, boils and lights anything touching it.
Paint a block of clone, then drop something on it. The first powder, liquid or gas to touch it is what the whole block learns, and it pours that out of its bottom forever, steadily, like a spout (a gas comes out of the top). Indestructible.
Every pixel you paint is a different pick from 18 elements: sand, water, salt, oil, gunpowder, nitro, napalm, concrete, lava, cryo, snow, acid, seed, soil, methane, plant, wax and ice.
Removes anything, walls and clones included. Right-drag or Shift-drag erases with any element selected.
These aren't in the tray. You can only make them.
Heavier than fresh water, so it sinks and makes a layered sea.
Rises, bubbles up through liquids, gathers under ceilings, and turns back into water drops. That's rain. Trapped steam turns back faster.
Glowing bits thrown out by every explosion and spat off the top of lava. They live only a moment and float up, but they're hot, so they can set off whatever they land next to.
Slow, gloopy, floats on water. Away from heat it hardens back into wax wherever it comes to rest.
Solid and immovable, but not forever. Acid and explosions still break it.
Heavy dark grains that tumble and sink through every liquid except lava.
Dark, clumpy, and the only thing seeds will grow in. Heat dries it back to soil.
Grows upward one pixel at a time and can push up through water. If something solid is in the way, it may give up. Burns.
Pops open where a stem finishes: pink, gold, violet, coral or ice-blue, picked at random. Flowers catch fire easily.
Each time a flame touches fuel, this is the chance the fuel catches that moment. Higher means it goes up faster.
| Fuel | Catch chance | |
|---|---|---|
| Fuse | every time | |
| Oil | 60% | |
| Bloom | 45% | |
| Seed | 40% | |
| Plant | 35% | |
| Stem | 30% | |
| Molten wax | 8% | |
| Napalm | already burning, from the moment you pour it | |
| Wax | never catches; it melts first | |
All four explosives go off the moment something hot touches them. Blast size is the radius in pixels. Everything inside is blown into fire, embers and empty space, except Wall and Clone.
| Explosive | Blast | |
|---|---|---|
| Methane | 4 px · pop | |
| Gunpowder | 6 px · bang | |
| Nitro | 12 px · BOOM, the whole pool at once | |
| C-4 | 22 px · crater, the whole block at once |
Every blast leaves hot fire and embers behind, so explosives packed together set each other off in a chain. The edge of a blast turns empty space and liquids into embers but leaves solid ground and powders standing.
Press Space to pause while you set something up, then press it again to let it run. Most of these need a floor: paint a line of Wall along the bottom, or press B for a closed box.
Pour a pool of water, float oil on top, touch one edge with fire.
The slick burns end to end. Steam puffs up where flame meets water.
Paint a small torch, then a tall block of wax sitting right on it.
The wax melts, drips down the sides and re-hardens into puddles.
Fill the bottom with water, then pour lava in from above.
Lava sinks, cools into rock islands, and sends up clouds of steam.
Wall off a box with a ceiling, put water in, and a torch underneath the water line.
Steam gathers under the ceiling and drips back down as rain.
Lay a bed of soil, sprinkle water on it, then drop seeds on the dark wet patches.
Stems shoot up and bloom in five colours. Add fire if you're feeling cruel.
Grow a garden, then press G to flip gravity.
Everything loose falls to the ceiling, and new stems grow downward.
Put C-4 inside a wall box, run a fuse out of it, then touch the far end with fire.
The flame runs in and the crater appears. The walls survive, but they shield nothing: everything within 16 pixels is gone, even outside the box.
Make a pond and pour nitro in. It sinks and hides on the bottom. Then paint one dab of lava right onto the nitro.
The blast punches a hole straight through the pond. Dropping lava in from above won't work: the water cools it into rock before it gets there.
Make a pond and drop a single pixel of ice in it.
Watch the frost creep outward. Use cryo if you're impatient.
Put C-4 in a wall cup and pour acid over it.
The acid eats it away quietly. No bang, because acid isn't hot.
Paint a clone block and touch it with lava first.
It turns out lava forever. Try steam for a cloud machine or seeds for seed rain.
Fill with water, then set a spigot to pour salt.
Salt water sinks under the fresh water in a paler band. Heat it and salt crystals come back out.
Wall off a room, fill it with methane, then drop in one spark.
The pops roll through the whole cloud, one lighting the next.
Start a big oil fire with a torch, then pour cryo on it.
Flames vanish, the torch goes out for good, and the cryo puffs into steam as it works.
Flips everything. Powders and liquids fall up, gases sink, the spigots move to the bottom edge, and stems grow the other way.
Out of the box, the edges are open, like the original game: things that fall past the bottom are gone, and gases float away off the top. Press B (or the Edges button) for a closed box that holds everything in.
Pushes gases hardest, steers liquids as they flow, and nudges powders a little. It only moves things into empty space.
Four pourers along the top, all off when the game opens. Click a spigot's name to pick what it pours: sand, water, salt, oil, gunpowder, nitro, napalm, concrete, lava, cryo, snow, acid, seed, soil or Random. Its five bars set how hard. Clicking any bar starts it, off stops it.
- + pick a speed from ¼ to 4. 1 is a relaxed 30 steps a second, 2 is the full pace of the original game (60 a second) and 4 is double that. Space pauses, . moves one tick at a time: good for watching a reaction frame by frame.
Flip the Tool switch on the right from Free to Line (or press L). Press and drag to stretch out a straight line, which shows as a faint preview, and let go to paint it. Esc drops a half-drawn line. Walls, floors and fuses are quick this way.
The game opens with one flat colour per element, like the original, so you can read a scene at a glance. The Single colours button on the right (or K) switches to Mixed colours, where every grain is a slightly different shade. It changes only how things look, never how they behave, and the game remembers your choice.