''The Powder Toy'' is a

falling-sand game A falling-sand game is a genre of video game and subgenre of sandbox games using a two-dimensional particle game engine or a cellular automaton. In falling-sand games, the user can interact with (e.g. place and remove) particles on a canvas whi ...

originally created by Stanislaw K. Skowronek (also known as Skylark). It is now developed and maintained by LBPHacker along with various other contributors on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

. The Powder Toy is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

licensed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

version 3.0. A total of 185 different in-game materials (or "elements"), each with custom behavior and interactions, are available in the game.

Gameplay

''The Powder Toy'', like most falling sand games, is a

sandbox video game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may ...

that allows users to create things in-game to share with others. It is also possible to create new content for the game by using

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

to create new elements, tools, and content. A public server for sharing in-game creations is provided as part of the game itself, allowing users to share anything that abides by the rules. Examples of player shared creations include functioning

circulatory system The blood circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the entire body of a human or other vertebrate. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, tha ...

nuclear power plants A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces elec ...

, and computers. Content is rated using upvotes and downvotes, and can be reported to the moderators if it breaks the on-site rules or plagiarizes other works.

Reception

edgalaxy.com called ''The Powder Toy'' a "great science game" for its potential use as a learning aid through its accurate portrayal of physics, chemical reactions and more.Explosive fun for students with THE POWDER TOY a great science game
on edgalaxy.com (2010-09-03)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Powder Toy, The 2010 video games Online games Simulation video games Linux games Windows games MacOS games Android (operating system) games Non-games Open-source video games Free software that uses SDL Free software programmed in C++ Video games about toys Video games with available source code Lua (programming language)-scripted video games Cellular automata in computer games