German for "definitely not getting any work done this afternoon"

December 18, 2018 10:06 AM

𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖘𝖕𝖎𝖊𝖑

A charming little sandbox game created by developer and artist Max Bittker [website] [twitter]

Guide to the Eighteen Elements

• Wall Indestructible
• Sand Sinks in water
• Water Puts out fire
• Stone Forms arches, folds under pressure
• Ice Freezes Water, slippery!
• Gas Highly Flammable!
• Cloner Copies the first element it touches
• Mite Eats wood and plant, but loves dust! Slides on ice
• Wood Sturdy, but biodegradable
• Plant Thrives in wet enviroments
• Fungus Spreads over everything
• Seed Grows in sand
• Fire Hot!
• Lava Flammable and heavy
• Acid Corrodes other elements
• Dust Pretty, but dangerously explosive
• Oil Produces smoke
• Firework Explodes into copies of the first element it touches

posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs (66 comments total)

Very fun game; implemented in Rust compiled to WebAssembly, so the source code may be interesting to look at.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:12 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

oh crap I love these games
posted by Countess Elena at 10:14 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

ACID IS OP.
posted by Fizz at 10:15 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

I created an "V" shape with ice, filled it with sand, erased the tip with 'empty' so it acted like an hourglass, and then put a bunch of mites on the top, to slowly watch them get sucked down in the quicksand. Yes, I enjoyed this.
posted by AzraelBrown at 10:28 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

What browser are people using? As much as I love to waste time at work, I can't seem to get it to do anything.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:30 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

BURN THE MITES WITH FIRE
posted by chavenet at 10:35 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

BURN THE MITES WITH FIRE

Then pour acid on them.
posted by Fizz at 10:36 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I love how creative you can be in these games. I hate how quickly they allow me to waste a lot of time without really having a point.
posted by asnider at 10:39 AM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

What browser are people using? As much as I love to waste time at work, I can't seem to get it to do anything.

Works for me in Firefox and Chrome: do you have any addons that might be interfering?
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:40 AM on December 18, 2018

Yes, that is what is the issue. An app I use for work was actively interfering in an unusual way. Now I can waste time!
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:45 AM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Cloner: fire vs water vs mites is working nicely
posted by q*ben at 10:48 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

German for "definitely not getting any work done this afternoon"

Grr. What's German for "access to this site has been restricted in accordance with your organization's Internet policies. Please contact an administrator if you believe this site has been blocked in error."?
posted by Naberius at 10:59 AM on December 18, 2018 [13 favorites]

I created an "V" shape with ice, filled it with sand, erased the tip with 'empty' so it acted like an hourglass, and then put a bunch of mites on the top, to slowly watch them get sucked down in the quicksand.

I created a "v" shape, filled it with dust, and with the finest brush possible and judicious use of the empty tool, left one mite at the bottom. It danced around for quite a few minutes until it found the growing dust pile - now I have quite a few, and the dust continues to drip.

At some point, the dust will be replaced with acid.
posted by nubs at 11:05 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Grr. What's German for "access to this site has been restricted in accordance with your organization's Internet policies. Please contact an administrator if you believe this site has been blocked in error."?

Scheisse.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:07 AM on December 18, 2018 [18 favorites]

Putting gas on a cloner and lighting it on fire is fun
posted by ckape at 11:07 AM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

It is tough to put out fires with water, once plants get involved!
posted by Grither at 11:16 AM on December 18, 2018

Putting gas on a cloner and lighting it on fire is fun

For more smoke, apply oil to the cloner first
posted by nubs at 11:16 AM on December 18, 2018

I'm building layer cakes of materials and then BLASTING through with the emptiness cannon, and then dropping a bunch of fireworks into the hole. Perhaps eventually I'll see if I can design a landscape in which plants will grow, but for now its destruction time. Mwa ha ha!
posted by Gray Duck at 11:28 AM on December 18, 2018

Yeah, my work thinks this is some sort of "adult" site if I try sandspiel.club

Here's the non-custom domain: https://sandtable-8d0f7.firebaseapp.com/

(Same hosting provider, just without the custom domain.)
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:29 AM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Naberius: "Grr. What's German for "access to this site has been restricted in accordance with your organization's Internet policies. Please contact an administrator if you believe this site has been blocked in error."?"

Don't now about you, but for me, that's exactly why I have a non-work laptop next to my work computer.

(Well, that, and my organization has a habit of randomly blocking specific countries that I need to contact on behalf of others here, so I have to have at least ONE unblocked computer handy.)
posted by caution live frogs at 11:31 AM on December 18, 2018

Not being much of a game player, can I ask a dumb question? Is there a point to this or is it just for fooling around to see what happens? Not that there is anything wrong with that, just want to make sure I'm not missing something.
posted by charlesminus at 11:43 AM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

→ Putting gas on a cloner and lighting it on fire is fun

that near one side of the screen plus fungus on the other makes for endless conflagrations that almost go out, then a little bit of fungus grows too far and a huge flare-up happens.

Needs sounds. Especially the mites. Screaming, preferably.
posted by scruss at 11:48 AM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

I have managed to make a configuration where it's cloning seeds that have mere moments to take root and grow before they are consumed by fire, which is certainly a metaphor for something.
posted by ckape at 11:55 AM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Wall is a tiny bit destructible.
Plants eat water and feed fire so quickly that they'll undermine your firefighting attempts.
posted by es_de_bah at 12:00 PM on December 18, 2018

There is no point to this, it’s just a sandbox, in a particularly literal sense.
posted by vogon_poet at 12:05 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I clones mites and now I need a shower. In acid.
posted by Omnomnom at 12:14 PM on December 18, 2018

Dousing a cloner in dust then lighting it on fire is particularly fun.
posted by slogger at 12:21 PM on December 18, 2018

This seems almost exactly the same as the browser game Dust, that has been around for a long time...in addition to the sandbox itself, there's a collection of other players' saved art and designs that's pretty cool.
posted by Lurch at 12:21 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

this is really satisfying my inner pyromaniac
posted by numaner at 12:38 PM on December 18, 2018

I have managed to make a configuration where it's cloning seeds that have mere moments to take root and grow before they are consumed by fire

Man, with these various combinations can we simulate Conway's Game of Life in this game?
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:41 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I managed to actually destroy a cloner. It was cloning ice. Nearby I had another cloning oil, which I then lit on fire. As the melted into water, it'd but out some of the fire and refreeze. Each time it did this, though, it was a little bit smaller and the cloner was more and more degraded until eventually it was entirely consumed by water, which then disappeared onto the fire.
posted by asnider at 12:59 PM on December 18, 2018

Fungus and Plants seem to synergize with each other; the plant eats the fungus, and then the surrounding fungus spreads out on to the newly exposed plant ends.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:04 PM on December 18, 2018

And... I think fungus feeds off smoke, which is interesting.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:05 PM on December 18, 2018

While I had been contenting myself with destroying mites with either acid or fire, I can also report that they appear to drown in oil or water.


I managed to actually destroy a cloner

Try cloning acid.
posted by nubs at 1:17 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Mites eat dust, which makes sense I suppose.
posted by slogger at 1:18 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what I've done but I have a looping mess. I think ice and water are sustaining themselves as fire melts the ice, something is making smoke and particles of plants keep getting destroyed and growing from the water run off.

Since I'm at work (on break!) I recorded this terrible quality gif to share my disaster which I felt looks kind of neat.

posted by ~Bert at 1:40 PM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Ok, the fireworks operate slightly differently than I had thought. They clone the first element they touch *before* they're ignited. They also propagate that information to any other fireworks they touch. I have been trying to use this to develop a sand and seed spreader but the fireworks end up destroying everything before they get too far.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:52 PM on December 18, 2018

Try cloning acid.

I guess that's to be expected. I kinda wish it was a slower burn, though.
posted by asnider at 2:11 PM on December 18, 2018

So seeds also grow on fungus; I just discovered that in playing around in my most recent hellscape.
posted by nubs at 2:22 PM on December 18, 2018

This is neat. It reminds me (especially the minimalist interface) of the old xtoys program from the 90's, which lets you simulate waves - either light waves, water waves or "matter" (meson) waves, as well as various models for ferromagnetism (Ising model, Potts model). If you like sandspiel give xtoys a try.
posted by crazy_yeti at 2:28 PM on December 18, 2018

You can get some lovely patterns by encouraging the fungus to infest a big chunk of wood.
posted by Anonymous Function at 2:54 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, my work thinks this is some sort of "adult" site if I try sandspiel.club

A lot of workplace or public internet firewalls block newly-registered domains for a period of time because they're heavily used for phishing and viruses. This is one rule that I can't even get around by using the guest wifi, which works for almost everything else.
posted by Sequence at 2:59 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I seem to have set a cloner on fire somehow. No idea how, but I recommend it. Endless fun.
posted by motty at 3:19 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've spent the last half-hour constructing structures so that by the time the fire burns through the wood, the other side is filled with dust. Boom!
posted by nubs at 3:49 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Fungus is kind of sneaky. I had dropped a fungus ball near one of the walls, it got burned, and then ages later when I was doing other things there was a sudden bloom of fungus at the top. It had crept along the wall as a thin white line until it hit a smoke plume and exploded into pink life.
posted by tavella at 4:56 PM on December 18, 2018

Also plant and fungus seem to make lichen, in a way; they'll work together with plant growing in fungus and fungus growing on plant to expand steadily without adding water.
posted by tavella at 4:57 PM on December 18, 2018

I'm not sure how I managed to set the ceiling on fire. Story of my life.

Try growing flowers with the seed and then dropping stone on top of them.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:03 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

everything is catching on fire, as TMBG once sang.

You can simulate fairly believable BLEVEs with lots of oil around a tiny patch of lava.
posted by scruss at 6:01 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Why does even a tiny bit of ice freeze all the water, how am I supposed to make ice floes under these conditions
posted by emjaybee at 7:38 PM on December 18, 2018

What's German for "stopping you from reading the latest in the US Politics Megathread"?

Wow, a lot of fun!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 8:31 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Finding these interactions and patterns is so much fun! I agree fungus is a sneaky sob; if you've ever added it don't be surprised to see it repeatedly pop up forever.

A water cloner feeding a plant that catches fire will basically fight forever.

The wind from a gas cloner that catches fire is very strong.

Why does even a tiny bit of ice freeze all the water

I guess it's ice-9? Fire melts it, temporarily.
posted by traveler_ at 8:41 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think there's a minor bug with fire: if the bottom-left cell has ever been on fire, sandspiel seem to think it's always on fire. This is particularly fun if you spray dust about on a blank screen: alles geht kablooie
posted by scruss at 7:06 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

I guess it's ice-9? Fire melts it, temporarily.

A fun thing about the way ice, water and "heat" interact in this is that a container of ice can hold a ball of lava indefinitely, as long as the ice is thick enough. The lava melts the ice it's immediately in contact with it, but the rest of the ice keeps refreezing it. The result is a ball of lava surrounded by a thin layer of water, contained indefinitely within a ring of ice.
posted by asnider at 9:05 AM on December 19, 2018

So far the best bomb seems to be wood shell filled with dust. Tiny hole. Apply fire.
posted by Splunge at 9:24 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Walls also aren't indestructible. They can be slowly corroded away with a mix of fire and fireworks I don't yet understand. Alternate layers of fireworks and dust separated by wood makes for huge cascading explosions.
posted by scruss at 9:29 AM on December 19, 2018

I've played if for a a day now and it seems a perfect allegory for a world of smoke and fire.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:32 AM on December 19, 2018

i'm enjoying how acid can destroy everything (except wall it seems), but also everything also use up the acid destroying them, so you can keep dropping acid on things and things on acid.
posted by numaner at 9:53 AM on December 19, 2018

This is missing both Lizard and Spock
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 12:49 PM on December 19, 2018

Fungus always wins in the end. An apt metaphor.
posted by emjaybee at 1:51 PM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I've managed to create some kind of lumpy equilibrium where a cloner drips water through a jekyll/hyde matrix of plants that are on fire, which then creates intermittent plant growth below, while off to the side I have oil that's on fire surrounding a cloner, and then another cloner with fungus because why not. So what happens is a cycle of plant growth followed by a wave of fire once the plants get too close to the fire, followed by renewal as the water drips down onto the smoldering embers.

Meanwhile, this whole time, the oil cloner has been slowly but steadily creating a giant dust pile that creeps closer and closer to the plants that keep growing and then catching on fire. I expect the whole thing to explode within the week.
posted by chrominance at 7:42 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Fungus always wins in the end. An apt metaphor.

This is indeed accurate. I was playing around with this yesterday and eventually lit everything on fire. Apparently, a bit of fungus survived because I came back to the computer today, having apparently not closed the tab, to find the entire screen was once again filled with fungus.
posted by asnider at 10:23 AM on December 20, 2018

Fungus only wins if you don't mix in plants and fire. I got an ever-burning torch going about two thirds of the way up, and now 'lichen' (plants and fungus working together) grows up the sides until it expands too close to the sparks, then burns down and regrows. You also get a tower of plants from the torch's dripping, sometimes all three join together before they burn and sometimes they burn separately.
posted by tavella at 10:45 AM on December 20, 2018

Right now I've got some cloners making gas, because that seems to catalyze fungus growth; fungus, to speed up the plant growth; plant, because it burns better than fungus; a little bit of lava in a slightly open container, to periodically burn (nearly) everything down.
posted by ckape at 10:49 AM on December 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

(single pixel gas cloners, so they can burn out)
posted by ckape at 10:56 AM on December 20, 2018

MetaFilter: a jekyll/hyde matrix of plants that are on fire.
posted by scruss at 6:26 AM on December 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Would love to know more about how cloners erode. Starting to run into issues getting my perpetual chaos machines to remain, well, perpetual. Something about the combination of water, plants and fire surrounding a cloner causes runaway cloner disintegration, but only under certain circumstances I haven't figured out yet.
posted by chrominance at 10:30 AM on December 21, 2018