Powder Game

I know, I know, I haven’t posted in about a month. I think I have Writer’s Block or something. 🙄

Anyway, here’s a game review on a cool simulation game called Powder Game.

You can place a wide range of materials in the little black box and experiment to see what happens. Since the site was originally written in some other language (I think it’s Japanese) and it might be hard to understand the internal guide, I’ve written my own guide so you know which material does what.

Click to enlarge.

Materials:

Powder: The default material. Burns at a moderate speed with not much energy.

Water: Can put out fire and grow trees. If touching Ice it can turn to ice itself. Can even get rid of magma if there’s enough of it. Obviously enough, it doesn’t burn.

Fire: Sets things alight. It disappears quickly. Generates a pretty large amount of energy when there’s a lot of it.

Seed: When placed on top of Powder it grows into a tree. Burns at a moderate speed with not much energy.

Tree: Can only be gotten from Seed + Powder (or via cloning). Burns at a slow speed with lots of energy.

Gunpowder: When on fire it explodes with moderate energy and at a fast speed.

Fan: Keeps generating energy. It can slowly erode if it is constantly hit with magma.

Ice: Ice can turn water into more ice. If hit by a strong wind it can turn into Snow. Ice cannot burn, but can be melted with magma.

Snow: This material isn’t very long-lasting. Ice turns to snow when it’s hit by a strong wind, but the snow normally turns to water a few seconds afterwards.

Super Ball: These bouncy little things can get quite annoying, but are pretty cool all the same. They can’t burn, but can be melted with magma (if you manage to stop them bouncing).

Clone: This is used to constantly generate the material it was first hit with.  It can be useful for stuff like tree-growing, but it can easily reach the ‘Powder Limit’* if left unsupervised.

Fireworks: By selecting another material with the left mouse button, you can put almost everything inside a firework. The default material inside is Powder. You must ignite these for them to release the material.

Oil: Oil is good for generating energy.  It burns at a slow speed with a lot of energy.

C-4: This is an explosive plastic. When ignited, it burns very fast with moderate energy. Well, it doesn’t exactly burn. Once ignited it kinda disappears slowly – it doesn’t bring the flame with it.

Stone: A rather boring material. If you grab it it turns to powder. It can’t burn, but if it’s heated up with magma, it turns into magma. Lazers have no effect on it.

Magma: One of the more interesting materials. It can destroy almost anything. The only other way (apart from deleting it) to get rid of magma is to either put loads of water on it or to somehow destroy it with a virus.

Virus: The virus material turns all other materials into more virus material. But other materials ‘fight back’. Whichever material is the first one to get infected it normally the one that takes over at the end of the ‘battle’. But a strong breeze can often restart the infection. Virus material is very unstable, and not to mention irritating. The bomb material can not be infected by virus material.

Nitro: My personal favourite. Nitro causes a massive explosion and burns in the blink of an eye. Grabbing it can set it alight if you’re not really careful. Sometimes super balls can ignite it too.

Ant: Ants make strange patterns in solid materials (such as tree, C-4 or metal). Once they burrow in, it’s quite tricky to get rid of them. Ants burn at moderate speed with not a lot of energy.

Torch: This material sets everything it touches on fire. It’s only weakness is water. Lazer has no effect on it.

Gas: This floating material is highly flammable. It burns very fast with a lot of energy.

Soapy: This is soapy water. It turns into bubbles if a strong enough breeze hits it. This can’t be used to grow trees, but it can be used to get rid of magma, destroy torch or put out fires (though it doesn’t seem to be very good at putting out flame since the energy it creates can sometimes turn the soapy water to bubbles.

Thunder: (This is wrongly named – it should be lightning.) Thunder moves randomly. Wind doesn’t effect it. Normally it just ignites material or blows it away like gunpowder. Metal can contain it. Stone turns to powder when hit by it.

Metal: It’s not as sturdy as you’d think. Water can erode at it and turn it to powder. When heated up like magma it turns into magma. It can contain thunder. It reflects lazers.

Bomb: This material is pretty useless. It destroys almost everything in it’s path.

Lazer: The newest material to be added, lazer is like a stronger, longer-lasting fire. It can destroy almost everything (excluding stone, metal and torch). It will continue moving until it reaches a block or an indestructible material.

Other objects and tools:

Box: What would a simulation game be without boxes? These are flammable. Fighters like to kick them around. The size of your pen determines the size of the box.

Bubble: If you’re too lazy to create bubbles with soapy water, or you want to be able to control the size of the bubble, this is the tool for you. Bubbles turn into the first material they touch (unless it’s a block, in which case they pop).

Fighter: The enemies of the game. If they kick your Player he dies. They can also die if they step on something like magma, fire, torch or lazer. They like kicking boxes around.

Player: This is your avatar. You control it with the left, right, up and down keys. You can also pick what colour his head is by selecting a different material with the left mouse button. If you press the down button he will puke whichever material you picked. His head colour can be changed if he runs into a different material. You can only have one player at a time. Fighters seem to have it in for him, and will kick at him (which kills him).

Wheel: This object turns around when material hits into it.

Block: One of the most important objects in the game. It is 100% impenetrable.  There is a thin lining of block around the black box (unless you delete it).

Erase: This tool only removes block and wheel objects.

Reset: Resets the black box.

Clear: This tool removes material.

Wind: Generates wind. Energy is wind created by materials.

Air: Generates air. Depending on white mouse button you have this tool equipped on, the type of air differs. Blue air is like a black hole: it sucks things in; green air is compressed tightly, so when it’s released it’s like a bomb.

* = There is a limited amount of material, block, fighters and boxes in the game. It’s very annoying, but you get used to it.

Hopefully you found that helpful. There are other features, such as pen size and special effects, but hopefully you’ll figure them out by yourself. If you can’t, feel free to leave a comment.

Also, you can upload things to the site. I haven’t figured out how to do this myself yet, so if you do please tell me. Some of these uploads are quite good. Others… aren’t so good.

I was going to do an ‘Interesting Things to Try’ section, but could only think of one:

• Try making a pit of lava, and then dumping fireworks filled with water on top of it. You can almost feel the magma’s despair as it realises ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ 😛

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Hopefully that wasn’t too painful to read. Have fun on Powder Game!

-legoless