The Powder Toy

jacob1

About this game

The Powder Toy is now on Android! This time it is officially supported, completely free, and slightly optimized for touchscreen devices instead of the traditional mouse and keyboard Powder Toy is usually run with.

The Powder Toy is a free physics sandbox game, which simulates air pressure and velocity, heat, gravity and a countless number of interactions between different substances! The game provides you with various building materials, liquids, gases and electronic components which can be used to construct complex machines, guns, bombs, realistic terrains and almost anything else. You can then destroy them and watch cool explosions, add intricate wirings, play with little stickmen or operate your machine. You can browse and play thousands of different saves made by the community or upload your own – we welcome your creations!

The game is very resource intensive. A powerful phone is recommended to play it properly. Button sizes have been increased in many places, but you might need a large phone screen or a tablet in order to have a better experience. If you find a feature that is hard to use on a touchscreen, or is absent from the Android version of the game, leave some feedback by clicking the bug icon in game or making a post on the forums.

It is fully compatible with the PC version of the game, saves made in one version can be loaded in the other.

Website: http://powdertoy.co.uk/Download.html
Source code (GPL): https://github.com/jacob1/The-Powder-Toy

Ratings and reviews

I'm relatively astonished at how realistically the simulations run on my mediocre phone! I understand this is a port of a pre-existing PC application, but the developer has done an excellent job of refactoring it into something that runs on devices with much less horsepower. And a note to those who feel this 'game' is too complicated: Well, yes - it can be rather intimidating, and it IS too complicated for a game. But it isn't a game - it's a simulation sandbox, and it requires at least a basic understanding of physics, material science, chemistry, etc; however, you don't need a Ph.D in order to enjoy the app. You just need to know the basic concepts, such as how pressure and temperature might affect certain liquids and gasses, and a mind curious enough to research the gaps. But if you get past that initial intimidation, this app holds many hours of interesting and cool discoveries!

5 stars only because it introduced me to The Powder Toy and because you can use it to view creations for ideas while you're on the go. Other than that, it's nearly impossible to do anything except mess around with blobs of stuff on the mobile version. The only thing I see possible to make this game usable is adding a curser that can be moved around and buttons to simulate the mouse buttons. Standard touch is nowhere near accurate enough to be viable here.

Very happy when i discovered this game after playing a few others that left me wanting a more immersed experience. Even with just a few elements it can provide hours of gameplay with experiment interactions and this sandbox is overflowing with them. Nothing is perfect, this is no exception. The menus and display are crowded at best, ive cleared the screen on accident many frustrating times. Bigger display equals more lag but there is no need for the menus to be so difficult to see and maneuver.

What's new

Update to TPT 98.0. Please check the website for the complete changelog
New elements: photoresist (RSST) and solid resist (RSSS)
Ability to rename stamps by tapping the stamp name
Version 1.18: Fix "Error: OK" when voting on saves