We have unveiled the future of the nuclear family. What if you could teach a creature to speak with no prior knowledge of the world?

In ProtoCog, you can do exactly that.

You are given a coglet that doesn’t know a single word. As you talk to it, it will start recognizing patterns in your messages to respond and construct totally new sentences.

Adopt a Coglet

R74n Minis

Over the past few months, we’ve been adding small and quick minigames to our website. Alongside ProtoCog, we already have four for you to try:

• RageBait Simulator - Make a virtual streamer mad by selecting the right words.

• What Are The Odds? - Explore increasingly smaller probabilities.

• Handwriting Personality Test - What does the way you write ‘7’ say about you?

• Costoflivingdle - Try to guess which everyday expenses are higher or lower.

Following our January redesign, our homepage has many projects neatly displayed!

Grand Census

NEWS FLASH: Our first Grand Census begins NOW. Fill out our form to make your voice heard!

We have put together a list of questions that will help us decide what to focus on. It will only be open for a limited time, so please submit your answers soon! They really will help us.

Fill out the Census

What’s Next?

With all that out of the way, this is what we’re planning on doing in the immediate future:

• Make more innovative Sandboxels updates.

• Start posting videos and other social media posts regularly again.

• Start posting Community Recaps here on the Newsletter.

• Improve existing minor projects, especially their consistency with the new design.

• Community events in our Discord server, which recently got verified and hit 16,000 members.

Thank you for your support, and don’t forget: MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

Pushers

Sandboxels now has a Pusher machine!

When powered, it pushes pixels in a direction. This is great for transportation needs that Pipes or Portals don’t suffice, such as a conveyor belt or moving a pixel group!

Text

There is a new Text display element!

It dynamically reacts to color, size, and even some special elements, like Rainbow.

When placing Text, the underlying pixels are visible, but will be hidden once deselected.

They even support special variables for displaying temperature, charge, and more.

Human Improvements

We overhauled the code for Humans to use that new pixel-grouping system. Don’t worry, old saves with Humans will be migrated seamlessly when loaded.

• Humans can be dragged without breaking apart

• Humans can swim

• Humans can now control pixel groups when they are included - maybe you can make a mech?

Rapid Fire Changes!

There were OVER 100 minor changes this update - here are just some of the best ones:

• Heat Loss setting: Slowly return to room temperature over time

• Setting to show tick count again

• Pixel groups can be cut into multiple pieces with Erase

• Estonian language support

• Magical reactions were added to make recipes for many special elements

• Static can be painted

• Border has a special reaction when Rainbow is underneath

To see ALL the changes, see the full changelog!

What’s Next?

We will continue making updates for Sandboxels, both the web and Steam edition! We have some fun ideas planned for the next updates.

We’re also working on other projects around R74n. Please check them all out on R74n.com.

Our Discord server hit 15,000 members, come join the fun and share your creations!

Play Sandboxels Now!

We know you have questions, so we will answer them here.

What will happen to development?

We will continue to develop Sandboxels for both the web and Steam. We are committed to make this transition as smooth as possible.

To celebrate the move, Sandboxels has already received a makeover!

• All buttons now have a sleek and dark look.

• The Settings menu has been redesigned to look less chaotic.

• You can view the Changelog in-game by pressing the version number (v1.13.3).

• An intro scene now appears for new players.

Where can I play Sandboxels?

When visiting the original link, sandboxels.R74n.com, you’ll be automatically redirected to the new page at neal.fun/sandboxels. This has all the same features and an improved look!

The Steam Edition will also continue to be updated, so feel free and get that to support us extra!

Where are my saves?

Don’t worry!! While save slots can’t be automatically transferred to the new page, they are still downloadable using our new Data Transfer Page. Once downloaded, you can easily load them into your game with the “Load File” button in the Saves menu.

This page can also be used to transfer your mods and settings.

A Message From Neal

And now, here’s a brief message from Neal, the creator of Neal.fun.

I’m so excited to have Sandboxels join Neal.fun! I was such a huge fan of falling-sand games growing up and think Sandboxels is one of the best out there. We’re excited to keep supporting the game for the long haul and will continue to add new features! We also want to make sure the transition is smooth and will continue supporting modding for the game.

What’s Next

As we said, we’ll continue to make updates for Sandboxels and there should be little change in that regard.

We’re also still independently working on other R74n projects, including our civilization simulator, GenTown!

The Steam Edition will be receiving the redesigned UI very soon.

Please follow us on our socials to stay updated:

• For videos – TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

• For extra commentary – Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads.

Edit Mode

Remember all those weird miscellaneous tools in the Special category? They have been moved to the new “Edit” tab!

The “Edit” button is where the “TPS” option used to be, which is now in Settings.

We expect to add a lot more editing tools to this tab in the future, but for now we added TWO - Group and Ungroup!

Use the Group tool to merge multiple pixels into a single structure, which will make them all move together - even Solids which are usually stationary. They can be dragged and can displace fluids.

And if you attach something like a Fly…

Graphical Updates

Fire has been given a better transition from yellow to red as it burns. This applies to Cold Fire, too!

Liquids and Gases will appear less grainy than other pixels.

When placing Lightning near certain elements, such as Neon or Copper, it will change color!

We also tried optimizing a lot of the rendering and simulation code, hopefully it makes a difference on your end.

More Features

Fillers can now be painted and will fight other colors:

And some more:

• Icing (also known as Frosting or Buttercream) - a new element made by mixing Butter and Sugar

• Shift-Select can set the frequency of a Battery or the element of the Image tool

• Portals show destination lines when hovered over or selected

• Worms can compost more organic materials, like Paper

We also fixed 15 bugs, including a couple nasty ones involving the new Filters and Gates.

That’s not all!

We have some even bigger things planned. Stay tuned and read the whole changelog for this update in the meantime.

• Join our Discord

• Try our new mini-project: What Are The Odds?

• Get Sandboxels on Steam

Play Sandboxels Now!

New machines ⚙️

First, we added the Filter! It acts like a sieve, allowing only certain elements to pass through.

It also has a cousin called the Gate, which only allows pixels through if it is powered by electricity.

Pipes can interact with these new machines, transferring pixels between them.

The new “Shift-Select” option brings extra functionality to existing elements. Just hold shift while selecting any of the following elements:

• Erase - Only erase certain elements

• Cloner - Clone multiple elements

• Filter - Allow specific states or multiple elements

• Sensor - Sense specific elements

• Portal - Set unique channels

• Void - Only delete certain elements

• Random - Randomly place specific elements

• Explosion - Custom explosion radius

• Antibomb - Explode into specific elements

To make room in the Machines category, we merged a few elements and expanded functionality into others. Old saves will seamlessly migrate once loaded into the game.

• LEDs R, G, and B -> A single customizable LED

• Superheater and Freezer -> Heater and Cooler (Heat or Cool them to control temperature)

• Tesla Coil and Shocker -> E-cloner

New graphics 🖼️

As you may have seen in recent YouTube/TikTok videos, background images and an Outline View are now here!

There are 6 default background images to choose from, but you can also use any image URL! To try the Outline View, press the ‘5’ key or select it in Settings.

We also improved the UI — Element buttons have a pixelated and colorful border. No more boring grays!

New tools 📐

We added a Ruler tool for taking measurements! This was originally to support people with myopia (nearsightedness), but it can be pretty helpful for everyone.

The Drag tool has also been greatly improved! It’s now much faster and smoother, letting you move pixels at record speeds.

New everything ♾️

There were over 60 more changes and bug fixes we didn’t talk about!

Ever tried to place Humans with Replace Mode enabled? Or use them on a Cloner? Yup, it’s fixed.

Please read the full changelog for all the new features! And enjoy :)

Play Now

We are calling creative individuals of all skill levels to participate in our community art project.

The concept is simple: Create a version of the R74n logo in a creative format. Either…

1. Draw your own version of the R74n logo, either digitally or physically.

2. Recreate the R74n logo in an interesting way. For example: in graphing software, in a video game, in-real-life, etc.

You may submit your creation(s) in the dedicated channel of our Discord server. If you can’t do that, feel free to send it to our email (contact@R74n.com), in the comments here, or any other way.

All logo submissions will be displayed on a gallery page!

Please ensure your submissions are square-shaped (1:1 ratio), and let us know your preferred name, otherwise the first one we see will be publicly posted. Can’t wait to see your art!

GenTown Update

GenTown was recently updated, introducing a new research system, 80+ new messages / decisions, and improvements for literally everything.

Play GenTown Online

If you played before, I suggest playing again! Personally, it was way more fun.

Community Showcase

Here are some awesome recent creations from the R74n community!

Realistic Alcohol Lighter by u/Personal-Jump-8450.

Send us your creations or funny images and we’ll share our favorites in the next recap newsletter!

Sneak Peak

Okay, you read through the whole article for this, right?

You may have seen new backgrounds and pixel outlines in our new Sandboxels videos. We’re happy to announce that they will be coming to the base game in the next update, along with many more features!

Have a good morning, evening, or night, and subscribe for free to catch the next recap!

The Timeline

Jan 3 — R74n Discord hits 10,000 members.

Jan 8 — glow.js mod for Sandboxels is released, revolutionizing the game’s look.

Feb–Mar — Infinite Chef explodes in popularity after viral Pinterest posts.

Mar 31 — R74n Guestbook is archived after 4 years.

Apr 1 — Sandboxels FOOLS update adds the Element Modulator.

May 2 — The R74n Collective turns 8 years old.

May 16 — Sandboxels is released on Steam, bringing the game to many new eyes.

Jun 24 — R74n YouTube channel hits 100,000 subscribers, resulting in verification and a Silver Play Button.

Jul — R74n participates in Art Fight 2025, receiving 13 drawings of Rue and other characters.

Jul 17 — Saves For All update brings Steam Workshop support and saves to thousands of new Sandboxels players.

Aug–Sep — R74n community draws logos and more in over 90 locations on Wplace.

Aug 26 — Sandboxels Feedback Form hits 8,000 feedbacks.

Sep 1 — Updated Modding Tutorial is released on the Sandboxels Wiki.

Sep 7 — Sandboxels is reviewed by GameGrin.

Sep 20 — R74n is interviewed by Indieformer.

Oct 15 — Rue Street 2025, an annual trick-or-treating event on Discord, begins and results in a bustling candy economy.

Oct–Nov — Bots from East Asia bombard the Unit Converter.

Nov 4 — GenTown is released.

Nov 5 — Vinny Vinesauce plays Sandboxels.

Nov 12–17 — Unit Converter and Explore with Rue receive rare updates.

Nov 16 — R74n is interviewed by Naive Weekly.

Nov 24 — The Steam Awards 2025 trigger a mass reviewing event, adding ~200 mostly-positive reviews to Sandboxels.

What has changed?

In 2025…

• YouTube: +20,000 subscribers.

• TikTok: +25,000 followers.

• This Newsletter: +2,700 subscribers.

• Pinterest: +70,000,000 impressions and +2,000,000 outbound clicks.

• GIPHY: +350,000,000 GIF & sticker impressions, particularly these Sandboxels burning GIFs.

• Infinite Chef: 250% increase in players.

• Discord: +3,800 members, +886,000 messages.

• Feedback Forms: +4,000 feedbacks.

What’s next?

After the successful release of GenTown, we are committing to increase the frequency of social media posts to help grow the community even further. We’re trying out new video styles, so check it out and let us know any feedback you have!

Plus, we’ll continue updating our games, hopefully branch out into other new projects throughout the coming year, and conduct an extensive community census this Spring.

Soon we’re hosting a community art project that anyone can participate in. Subscribe to this newsletter to hear about it first!

What’s your favorite moment from 2025? Comment on this article and we’ll share our favorite answers!

🌏 GenTown 🏘️

You open the GenTown page, and are looking down on a randomly-generated planet, ready for you to place the first settlement.

Your new town is full of residents that have great faith in you, but you cannot help them directly. They will ask for your input, but have lives of their own.

Should they invent agriculture? You decide! They might need it…

The initial release of GenTown has many features that make your world feel alive, with more to come in future updates. Including…

• Colonies,

• Laws and revolutions,

• Economies and trade,

• Town relationships and wars,

• Natural disasters,

• And more… we won’t spoil too much!

PLAY NOW 👇

Please go play now on the web and leave us feedback :)

And, use the Share feature to post about GenTown online! They’ll look like this:

My GenTown planet, Oossajai, lasted 230 days before they lost faith in me!

🌱🐄🔥🍳🪨⛏️📈⚖️🏫🗡️

The emojis represent things you unlocked!

Play Now

👻 Sandboxels ⏳

All throughout October, Sandboxels will have three new spooky elements!

When a Human is… destroyed… they will turn into a Soul!

Souls will float around until they reach the top of the canvas, where they will ascend into the afterlife! They haunt living Humans which makes them panic. Sometimes, they also drop Ectoplasm, or emit a brief Flash.

The Tombstone has also been added. It is used to summon Souls and can be made by haunting Rock Wall.

If you’re playing on Steam, please enable the “souls.js” mod to get them added!

🎃 Infinite Chef 🥘

Also lasting all month, Infinite Chef has a special pumpkin bowl texture! Share your scary dishes… I suggest using Spider, Pumpkin, or Gummy Worms.

🏘️ Rue Street 🍬

Starting October 15th, we are opening up Rue Street, a channel on our Discord server, for trick-or-treating!

You will be able to create your own thread, representing your house, and anyone can come to your door and ask for candy! What you give them is up to you…

Join Now

Join now and select the “Server Events Ping” role to be notified!

One More Thing.

We’re making a new game. :)

🎨 Save Browsing 💾

There are now multiple ways to browse and load community-made canvases! Select one of the new tabs of the Saves menu:

Try our curated selection in the “Featured” tab. These have no mods enabled and should work for all players!

The “Discord” tab allows you to browse, search, and filter saves posted in our Discord server.

Finally, for those with the Steam Edition… Sandboxels now fully supports the Steam Workshop! You can publish saves right from the game for everyone to immediately try out.

🎮 More Steam Features 💨

In addition to Workshop support, Sandboxels now has a dedicated data folder on your computer, similar to other games.

This folder has subfolders for locally-stored saves and mods. The saves can be managed directly in-game — no more slots!

Discord Rich Presence support has also been added, which displays details about your canvas on your profile, such as your selected element and pixel count.

If your Steam client has another language selected, Sandboxels will try to enable translations automatically. The game version number and element counts from the web version are now also shown.

🧪 New Elements 🔥

Two new elements are ready to meet you!

Lye is a versatile powder made from Sodium-based reactions. It can be used to produce Soap, Bleach, and Methane. It can even un-galvanize Galvanized Steel!

Invar is a dark metal alloy, made by melting Iron with Nickel.

☔️ Streak View 🧐

A new view mode?!?! That’s right, press the 4 key on your keyboard to select Streak View.

This will leave a trail behind all moving pixels, which will fade over time, creating interesting spectacles like this rain below.

🌽 Small But Neat 🌈

Here’s a quick rundown of some other new features to try out!

• Buttons now have a smooth clicking animation

• Corn is now affected by gravity (Wow!)

• Many metals have been recolored, creating some unique element colors

• Sand can be dyed into Color Sand of the same hue

• Melting Glass with certain elements, like Gold, will create Stained Glass (Discover them all!)

• Clicking on an empty Cloner will set its element — no need to actually place it!

Full Changelog

There were over 140 changes, including 19 bug fixes! Read the FULL CHANGELOG.

😌 Phew…

Play Sandboxels

Try out the new update now on the website or on Steam!

We have a lot more planned around R74n in the coming months. Please enjoy and subscribe to this Newsletter to learn when new updates drop!

♨️ CHECK STEAM ♨️

The Steam edition of Sandboxels can be picked up now for under a dollar! And even better: For a limited time, it’s 40% off!

It comes with fancy lighting pre-installed!

View on Steam

Don’t want it yet? Put in on your wishlist to support us for free!

🆕 THE UPDATE 🆕

This update has many small but fun features!

First, we added a new set of themes that you can select from. Each one is based on an element in Sandboxels! Below, you can see the Brick theme.

Other themes include the default Dark, Fire, Juice, Plant, Steam, Water, Plasma, and Snow – which is the equivalent of a light mode.

Additionally, we made the backgrounds of menus translucent, so you can see what’s going on behind them!

We also added a new “Destroyable” border mode, where your canvas is surrounded by a layer of Glass, and greater support for Korean, Italian, Serbian, and Australian English.

Play Now

Be sure to view the full changelog for technical changes and bug fixes.

🕰️ What’s Next? 🕰️

So far, the Steam release is only a port of Sandboxels. However, the next update will include unique online integrations with Steam, potentially with a Workshop save browser. Once you purchase Sandboxels on Steam, you are guaranteed to receive these features when they launch!

The web version of Sandboxels will continue to receive free updates!

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to us on YouTube! We’re almost at 100,000 subscribers.

But we need your help.

💧 Why Steam? 🔥

The Steam version of Sandboxels will let you install the game to play without a browser. This means it’ll be playable without an Internet connection.

It will also be available without advertisements, and will come with wider screen space and glow effects built-in!

After release, we also expect to add certain online features, such as Steam Workshop for community saves.

📋 Wishlist on Steam ✍️

In order to have a successful launch, we’d like you to wishlist the game, which you can do right now!

Wishlist on Steam

When you wishlist, you’ll be notified immediately after the Steam version is released.

🎥 New Game Trailer 🎮

To celebrate the upcoming release, we released a new official game trailer for Sandboxels. Check it out!

Watch on YouTube

⏳ What About The Site?! 🌐

Don’t worry! Nothing is happening to the official Sandboxels website - It will continue to receive all updates at the same time as the Steam version!

🌌 FOOLS 💀

We at R74n receive many requests for new elements. Too many, in fact. We can’t keep up!

This is why we have tapped into the Sandbloxian universe to give you access to their Element Modulator!

Tap on the “Element Modulator” button below the game to harvest an element from across the multiverse! Such as… “Ewilo”.. or.. “Zimouta”!

Additionally, FOOLS Mode has returned. Press the “FOOLS” button on the Sandboxels toolbar to have your whole game randomized!

FOOLS features will disappear on April 4th, but the rest of the features will stay for good!

🔳 Border Modes 🔁

For the longest time, pixels were bound by the walls of the simulation. Now, you can enable one of the new Border Modes in Settings!

• Solid - The default that you’re used to!

• Void - Pixels will be deleted when they reach the border.

• Loop All - Pixels will teleport to the opposite side when reaching the border.

• Loop Horizontal - Pixels will teleport to the opposite side on the left and right borders.

🌡️ New Thermal View 🔥

Thermal View has been improved! Each time you enable it, it calculates the minimum and maximum temperature of the scene. This way, the hottest pixels in your scene will always appear red, and the coldest will appear blue!

This lets you see more subtle differences than before, so you can see the various heat sources of your system!

🌐 Other Changes 🤯

There were over 70 changes in this update! Including…

• Support for Finnish and Indonesian, as well as partial support for many more languages!

• Keybinds to load and reload a save file (Ctrl+O and Ctrl+Shift+O)

• Flame color test can now be done on non-flammable elements without melting them (e.g. Fire + Copper)

• ‘Golden Wind’ Tornado variant

• Various chemistry and Milk variant improvements

• 12 bug fixes

View the Whole Changelog!

🔮 The Future 📢

We’re currently working on a new major game project and another minor project.

Stay up to date and discuss on our Discord!

Play Sandboxels

P.S. Our YouTube is almost at 100,000 subscribers… Go subscribe!

🟠 Portals 🔵

Two of the new elements are interconnected Portals!

The “Portal In” element will teleport pixels and electricity to any available “Portal Out” pixels.

🪸 Corals 🪸

A new aquatic lifeform was added!

These multicolored Corals make for perfect aquarium decorations. They also provide shelter for Fish and can block Water from hitting the shore.

Be careful! Under extreme heat, these creatures will turn white in a process known as “bleaching”.

⚡️ Electricity Rework 💡

Electricity has been updated to be more consistent! Before, it was quite unstable and unpredictable. This should make it easier to build complex machines!

Effects on existing builds should be limited, but please report any issues!

📋 GUI Changes 🔍

A keen observer may notice the Sandboxels page looks a bit different…

• Pixels can now take up the borders of a canvas, commonly known as “The Gap”.

• Menus, buttons, and the canvas now have a thicker border.

• Many user prompts now use built-in dialog boxes.

• “Wide” canvas setting now takes up even more screen space!

💧 Smaller Changes 🧱

Adobe has been added - a new dirt-based building material made from Mud and Straw.

Liquids, like Water, will move amongst themselves instead of appearing stationary.

Molten elements, like Magma, will oscillate color, appearing more red or more yellow over time.

Tornadoes exposed to Radiation can be turned into a new variant.

Lattice Wars were also fixed after they had broken in the Rendering Update.

🤯 MUCH MUCH MORE 😳

There were over 100 more changes in this update! Please read the full changelog to see them all!

Play Now

P.S… The glowing effects you saw in this article were from the glow.js mod! It only works on the desktop version of Google Chrome.

Join our Discord to be notified when new updates drop, or subscribe to this newsletter!

🍹 CUP MODE 🧋

Probably the most requested feature - a glass cup!

Switch to Cup Mode to create your wildest drink combos, cupcakes, or aquariums(?).

🍾 New Ingredients 🐸

This update adds many new ingredients and recipes, including mixable dyes of every color of the rainbow!

Pictured: Purple-dyed Doll, Gingerbread Man, Jackfruit, Cheese Wheel, Maggot, Meatball, Mochi

You can now make Cupcakes in either Cup Mode or with the new Cupcake Wrapper ingredient.

You can also make Casu Marzu (maggot cheese), Dango, Focaccia, Poutine, and more!

🍽️ Let’s EAT 🥄

This update has so much. I hope that you read the full changelog here!!

Play Now

Join the fan-made community on Reddit, or the official R74n Discord server! Watch or post your own Infinite Chef videos on YouTube!

🧱 New Textures 🪟

Some elements are getting a makeover!

Bricks appear less flat with new shading, and once again have their grain! The “Ruins” element now also has a Brick texture.

Glass is shown with a light border, affecting any pixel that is next to air or a non-solid.

🧀 New Powders 🍫

Powder versions of Cheese and Chocolate were added to make cooking more responsive. They can be made by breaking the respective ingredients, with the Smash tool or explosions.

In addition, the Smash tool will move around pixels that can’t be broken down further. This is helpful for tenderizing Meat, for example.

🙀 Human PANIC 😳

Humans will now panic when they see dangerous things, like Fire, and run away—or try to.

There have been other improvements to Humans; They’ll eat food much more consistently, and will change direction when they hit a wall. They also won’t eat Human Meat anymore…

💐 Quality of Life 🔨

We improved so many aspects of Sandboxels; Little things that make a huge difference.

When holding Shift to draw a line of pixels, you will be shown a preview instead of a single thin line.

LEDs, Light Bulbs, and Border can be painted into any color.

And more:

• Rocks, Brick Rubble, Dirt, and Sand can be glued to create their solid counterparts.

• Recipes related to Clay.

• Cheese flows more slowly.

• Screenshots will be named after the current loaded save.

• 20 bugs fixed, including floating powders when using Replace Mode.

• New modding capabilities.

Be sure to check out the entire changelog, with over 90 individual changes!

View Changelog

🎂 One More Thing… 👇

We asked our Discord community members to submit whatever they wanted for the Sandboxels birthday! View all of the submissions on the dedicated page on R74n.

🕷️ The Crawly 🕸️

Yes, the emoji is right! Spiders have finally arrived to Sandboxels, along with their Webs.

Spiders will crawl around until they find a wall, which they will climb on the side of! Once high enough, they will start their very own Web! Spiders can also join existing webs.

Spiders will expand their Web, which will catch any unsuspecting bugs, such as Flies. This is the first arachnid representation in Sandboxels.

Spiders aren’t the only bugs getting attention! Ants can now also climb walls.

👻 The Creepy 😨

For a limited time, Souls have been added!

When a Human perishes, a Soul will be left behind. These glowy particles will hover around and slowly rise until they escape the atmosphere.

Souls are producers of Ectoplasm, a paranormal fluid that slowly dissipates. Tombstones, found in the Special category, spawn Souls over time.

Souls can also perform hauntings, including blowing up powered Light Bulbs, activating Wires, and causing Humans to panic and run about.

After October is over, you can still play around with these elements by installing the souls.js mod!

🍫 The Rest 🍬

Many more features were added. Please read the full changelog!

Read the Full Changelog

• Pumpkin Seeds are unhidden during October.

• Candy is candy corn-colored during October.

• Humans will wear orange shirts on Halloween.

• Fire can heat existing pixels when placed on top of them.

• Wet Sand and Mud release Steam when heated.

• Water will make Bubbles before boiling.

🔜 But WAIT 👇

Sandboxels is not the only thing getting a Halloween treatment!

Infinite Chef will be receiving a similar update in a week.

Starting October 16th, we will be having a trick-or-treat event right in our Discord server!

Finally, visit the main page all month to see our new pumpkin logo.

We completely overhauled the rendering system on the backend, allowing for more visual effects and modding capabilities. Along with that, we polished many aspects of existing elements, and added a few new ones.

🥽 Rendering Overhaul

Try out all these new visual effects! Most can be turned off with the updated “Fancy Pixels” setting.

• Hot pixels will begin to glow as they melt down.

• Fire appears more yellow as it rises.

• Cursor is smooth on lower TPS.

• Rays, Aurora Borealis, and more fade out over time.

• Glowing Fireflies appear like gases.

Disclaimer: Some existing mods will stop working until they are updated. If this happens, you can press the Clear Mods button in the Sandboxels settings.

🧽 Sponge Rework

The Sponge element has unlocked new functionality!

Sponges can now soak up a limited amount of Water. They will appear darker the more they absorb.

This Water can be released by smashing, boiling, exploding, or deleting the sponge!

Dust can also be used to prevent the Sponge from absorbing any liquids.

🍚 New Elements

🍙 Rice will absorb Water and can be cooked into a soupy broth. It also makes for good Bird feed!

👑 Midas Touch, found in Special, will turn anything it touches into Gold, creating a destructive and beautiful experience.

🏠 Galvanized Steel is made by coating Steel in a layer of Molten Zinc. Normal Steel also has an update texture to go along with it.

💥 Liquid Ozone can now be made, which is explosive when rapidly heating.

🌊 Ocean Updates

Sea Foam can generate in a bunch of scenarios, including:

• Sandy Salt Water shores

• Salt Water wetting Sand

• Algae in Water

• Dead Bugs in Water, also known as Foam Lines

Fish and Humans will also create air Bubbles underwater.

⚡️ Electric Revolution

Constructing logic gates was certainly already possible, but this update adds new functionality to the Fuse element which makes it easy!

Yes, that’s right, they’re that compact!

Fuse can now carry electricity, but won’t conduct back into E-cloners. When shocked, they will delete themselves. This simple behavior allows you to create one-time electric passthroughs and simple switches using E-cloners and Sensors.

🤯 And MORE…

The Sandboxels page might look a bit cleaner, with element buttons being spaced evenly! As well as…

• “Limitless Mode” setting to remove pixel limits

• “Wide” canvas size setting

• Extinguishing elements, like Water or Foam, can be drawn over existing pixels to stop their burning

• Void ignores element hardness

• Superconductivity in some really cold metals

• Humans, Stained Glass, Rainbow, and more don’t need an extra frame to finish placing

• Czech element translations

• 18 bug fixes, including very old ones

• If you create mods, you should check out 1.10example.js

This update contains over 140 changes! Please read the FULL changelog to learn about everything that was added!

Play Now!

How often do you play Sandboxels?

It seems most respondents like to play multiple times per week!

Where did you first hear about Sandboxels?

Most players originally discovered Sandboxels through YouTube, TikTok, or a search engine.

What platform do you play on?

Since school is no longer in session, the Operating System question was severely skewed. The Web Browser question, though, seems more reliable. Most users are on Google Chrome, as expected!

Which element is the most useless?

Besides Humans, many users believe Sand, Beans, Pointer, Bone, and Diamond have the least uses. We will look into these in a future update!

Which mods are your favorite?

Two mods achieved 100 or more votes this year! The 10 top-rated mods will be featured at the top of the Sandboxels Mod List.

At 103 votes, chem.js by lllllllllwith10ls takes the lead, with countless elements, compounds, and chemical reactions.

Right behind, aChefsDream.js by SquareScreamYT with all the food and recipes you could ever need.

• chem.js [103] by lllllllllwith10ls

• aChefsDream.js [100] by SquareScreamYT

• delete_all_of_element.js [68] by Alice

• survival.js [60] by R74n

• alchemy.js [42] by R74n

• nousersthings.js [29] by nousernamefound

• spring.js [25] by R74n

• weapons.js [21] by Jayd

• elementsManager.js [22] by ggod

• fey_and_more.js [20] by Melecie

Disclaimer: We skipped a few mods that were made by us to include more community members!

Please share anything else you'd like :)

We let respondents tell us anything. Below are some answers that stood out!

Topic of School:

• I showed this to my science teacher and he liked it 😃

• Nuclear reactor project, [which] I shared with my highschool teachers

• I showed this game to my science teacher and she loved it!

• I've learned many things from this game, and it even helps with school!

• in class … since I had been playing this game for a while, I taught him the ropes by teaching him how to make a nuclear reaction

Topic of Enjoyment:

• I usually spend a long time making forests, cities and ecosystems. Then I incinerate it. :)

• Tornados can become fire tornados.

• I would give you guys a 10 star review if i could because.. THIS GAME IS THE BEST!!!

We’ll be reading all of them, thank you for the kind words!

What’s next?

If you weren’t able to fill out the census, no worries! We hope to do another one later in the year.

Work will begin on a new Sandboxels update soon! Subscribe here to be notified when it comes out.

In the meantime, please join our Discord server to hang out with the community and share your discoveries.

If you play in school, this version brings plenty to try during free time. Sandboxels is also playable anytime on practically every device, simply by visiting the website!

⚙️ Mixer & Grinder

Two new machines have been added, the Mixer and the Grinder! They are similar to the Mix and Smash tools.

The Mixer will swap movable pixels with others. The Grinder does the same, but also breaks them as it does it!

They are always on, so place them down and drop material on them, like Grapes!

🌊🌿 Kelp

The new Kelp element not only adds scenery to your aquatic landscapes, but also provides your fish with a tasty snack.

Since Kelp replenishes so quickly, Fish will need more nutritious food, like Algae or Worms, to lay eggs.

🥶 Freeze Ray

One of the most requested elements, the Freeze Ray is the opposite of the Heat Ray. When used, it will remove all heat from the cursor downward.

🌌 Aurora Borealis

Yes, just like the Eclipse Special, we are adding another relevant stellar event!

When Protons excite Oxygen or Nitrogen high up in the atmosphere, they will start to glow!

🌪️ Disaster Updates

We’ve improved and polished the natural disasters added in v1.9.4.

Tornadoes, Earthquakes, and Tsunamis will now merge together if they are close, creating an even bigger effect.

Tornadoes also now have 3 new variants! If they are over Sand, Fire, or Water, they will become a Dust Devil, Firenado, or Waterspout respectively.

They’ll also create temporary clouds when flinging Sand or Ash into the air.

♾️ SO Much More

This update adds a lot more than what we discussed! Including…

• Cloth, from glueing Feather together

• Shift button on mobile for drawing lines and intensifying tool effects

• Large and small canvas settings

• Lookup tool drag-over

• More chemical reactions

• 28 bug fixes, including gaps when drawing fast on mobile

• Behavior modding improvements

In total, there were over 100 changes and additions! You should read over the whole changelog.

Play Now!