About SandLab: Falling-Sand Physics Sandbox with 270+ Materials
SandLab is a falling-sand physics sandbox where over 270 materials interact with each other on their own. Pour sand, flood it with water, drop lava into a lake and watch it hiss into steam and harden into stone. Acid eats through metal, current runs along wires, plants grow toward water, and gunpowder explodes. The lab covers powders, liquids, gases, metals, chemicals, food, life, and special elements including cloner, void, and black hole.
Room settings let you shape the environment entirely: adjust temperature anywhere from deep-space cold to blazing heat, dial gravity down, off, or upside down, add wind, and speed up heat flow. One-click presets — Moon, Arctic, Inferno, and Upside Down — reconfigure everything at once.
How to Play SandLab: Discover 199 Reactions and Fill Your Lab Notebook
Select a material, then draw it into the sandbox to trigger reactions. Short goals guide early experiments and point toward new combinations: boil water, grow a plant, make glass, light a lamp, bake bread, forge bronze. All 199 reactions can be discovered and recorded in the lab notebook, alongside 20 goals to complete.
Pause the simulation at any moment, step through it frame by frame, slow it down, or push it to 4× speed to study fast reactions. Three save slots plus autosave keep experiments safe. The view can be switched between materials, temperature, and flammability overlays to read what is happening inside the sandbox.
Controls
- Left click or tap and drag: draw with the selected material or tool
- Right drag or Shift + drag: move the camera
- Mouse wheel or pinch: zoom
- Space: pause / play
- .: step one frame (while paused) or speed up
- ,: slow down
- Ctrl + Z: undo
- [ and ]: smaller / bigger brush
- + / - / 0: zoom in, zoom out, reset zoom
- V: switch view (materials, temperature, flammability)
- R: room settings
- G: goals and reactions
- M: sound on / off
- Esc: close the open window
Key Features
- 270+ materials: powders, liquids, gases, metals, chemicals, food, life, and special elements like cloner, void, and black hole
- 199 reactions to discover, 20 goals
- Room settings: temperature, gravity, wind, heat flow
- Heat map and flammability views
- Pause, step frame by frame, slow motion or 4× speed
- Undo, zoom, three save slots plus autosave
Games You Might Like
Browse the full Simulation games catalogue for more sandbox and physics-driven experiments like SandLab. For more hands-on chaos, Avocado Yard: Ragdoll Sandbox lets you build contraptions and trigger real-time ragdoll physics with ropes, cannons, and chain reactions. Sandbox City swaps the lab for an open city where you drive freely and deal with a spreading zombie infection.
If you enjoy the Physics games side of SandLab, the bouncing trajectories of Obby: +1 Stone Skipping offer a different kind of satisfying physical chain reaction. Fans of the nurturing and discovery loop may also enjoy My Fluffy, a cozy pet-raising game with its own progression of unlockable locations. The Logic games section rounds out the selection with more puzzle-minded challenges.