Sand in a Box is a fresh modern 'falling sand' playground out now on Steam

Developer Patryk Zieliński of Tiliasoft just released Sand in a Box in Early Access on Steam, a fresh and new falling sand game with a lot of toys to play with.

Sand in a Box is a falling sand simulator with advanced simulation algorithms designed for modern CPUs. Players can experiment with materials like sand, water, metals, lava, and acid, featuring cellular automata physics, thermal imaging, electrical conductivity, and radioactivity. The game supports modding, allowing the creation of new sets of elements and changes to the rules of the simulation. It fully supports Steam Deck (controller and touchscreen) and desktop Linux distributions.

Looks like a whole lot of fun, check out the trailer below:

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Speaking to the developer over email they mentioned how it originally started life as an iOS game on the App Store, but it's been gradually improved over the years with many new features.

Asking them how it differs to games like The Powder Toy, which also had a Steam release recently, they said "Overall I'm just trying to develop unique features and I don't look at the other 'falling sand' games. I'm not aiming to make a better game than "The Powder Toy", just different enough that people would like to play both of them." and highlighted how it has been "designed for Steam Deck from the start".

Speaking about Early Access they said: "Currently Sand in a Box launches in Early Access and I plan to actively develop it over at least few months listening to community feedback. One of the features I would like to add in a near future is multi-track video editor. That allows to record user input over multiple tracks while processing 'falling sand' simulation.

However the main reason of going Early Access route is community feedback. I personally like to work on cellular automata simulations and there are people who can play with them for hours.
My ultimate goal is to deliver really good experience for those people, solving multiple programming challenges along the way :)".

One thing to note, is that the developer does use some AI. As noted on the store page:

Gameplay trailer on storepage uses song made with the help of suno.ai
Some backgrounds in the game are made with the help of various generative AI tools like Adobe Firefly.

It's available with Native Linux support on Steam.