GopherSand

GopherSand is a falling sand game written in Golang using the awesome Ebitengine game engine. It is directly inspired by maxbittker's sandspile and the article he wrote about it.

Features

As with most games of this type, there is no real goal: you can't win or lose. The player places various materials into the world and watches them react with each other. Although each material follows a relatively simple set of rules, interesting behaviors can emerge from their combinations.

The game features 16 different materials (including the Empty 0 material), from which 10 can be directly put into the world by the player:

 act as eraser, by default the whole world is empty

 does not fall, and hard to react with

 falls down and piles up, good soil for a Seed

 falls down and spreads, plants love it

 falls down and spreads a bit, if it gets in contact with Sand and Water, it turns into a Root

 ant eggs are falling down, ants can climb and dig around creating AntHills, they eat plants and lay eggs

 need to drink water and eat an ant to lay an egg

 moves like water, dissolves most materials turning them into either Smoke or Steam

 raises up and spreads, creating Smoke. It can turn flammable materials into more fire

 stops most materials it touches, it melts over time creating cold Water

The following 6 materials are product of reactions in the world:

• Smoke raises up and spreads. Fire turns into smoke over some time
• Steam raises up and spreads. It is created on smooth Water surface, or in wildfires. steam can condenses back to Water
• Root is created from Seed, it tries to grow and search for Sand and Water, it can grow more root, or Plant
• Plant is created by Root which is also feeding it. Plants can grow more plants, and sometimes Flowers
• Flower has 4 petals and a Seed in the middle. If the seed falls out, the flower can grow another one
• AntHill is created by ants from materials they can dig or eat trough themselves. AntHill is falling down, but does not spreads, it can support sand

Beside directly putting materials into the world the player can Generate a new random world, or Erase the current one by turning every non-empty material into fire. The game reacts to orientation changes, and rotates the world accordingly, creating this cool 90's liquid sand art effect (this behavior can be controlled from the Menu)

Controls

The game can be controlled with: mouse / mouse + keyboard / touch:

• Click on a material to select it, only one material can be selected at a time
• You can also select Materials with 0-9 keys
• Place the material into the world with the Left mouse button, or touch (multi touch supported)
• Clear the area with the Right mouse button (this is the same if you would select Empty material, and use the left button / touch)
• Change the size of the brush with the Size button or with the mouse Wheel
• You can pause and resume the game with the Start/Stop button or the P key
• The Gen button opens the new world generator menu, the G key generates a new world
• The Erase button opens the erase dialog, the E key erases the world
• The Menu (hamburger) button opens the options menu
  • Full Screen mode can be turned on
  • Debug Mode can be turned on (to show activity, FPS, brush and material info)
  • Auto rotation can be turned off
  • You can manually rotate the world from the Menu

License

The game is open-source and uses the MIT license, so you can use / modify / distribute it as you wish. The source code can be found on GitHub