UPDATEDSandbox
Tumblebox
A falling-sand test chamber where every cell carries a temperature, metal carries current, and sawdust-stuffed crash-test dummies burn, freeze, float and snap.
What it is
pour, heat, spark, drop
A materials test chamber. Pour powders, liquids and gases into a grid where every cell carries a real temperature, the air carries pressure, and metal and salt water carry current; then drop sawdust-stuffed dummies, crates, barrels, rubber balls, planks and iron weights in among them. Dummies try to stand, swim when wet, panic when they burn and go limp when knocked out, and their limbs snap off and spill sawdust that burns like sawdust. Rope ties bodies together and rockets strap onto them. Every element's card is written from the same table the box runs on, and a thermometer under the cursor and a ruler on every edge tell you exactly what happened. The Box menu loads the Bench, the Quarry and the Furnace, opens six more rigs as the test log fills, and keeps three save slots. The manual keeps a test log of every change on the element cards and everything the bodies can do, ticked off as you make it happen with the blanks still showing, and each day the Box menu holds a work order, the same rig for everyone: a goal, a ration of materials and a clock that runs only while the box does.
How to play
Controls, then the numbers that matter
Pure water does not conduct and salt water does. Run metal from a battery into a pool, pour salt in, and the current fans out as the water turns salty; a lamp at the far end lights while it runs.
Acid eats stone, metal and wood but not glass. Heat sand with the Heat tool past 1,700 °C and it melts; below 1,300 °C it sets as glass, and a glass cup holds acid.
V switches between the normal, heat and air views. In the heat view every cell and body is coloured by its temperature, so you can watch hot air rise off a flame and a dummy warm toward 230 °C, where its canvas catches.
T runs the box at a quarter speed, and in the air view a gunpowder chain reads as a pressure wave. Space pauses, and . steps one tick of the 60 in a second.
Click a rocket onto a dummy or a crate to strap it on, then light it with a spark, fire, heat or lightning: it thrusts for 3.5 seconds, nose first, and then bursts.
Below −25 °C a dummy freezes stiff (liquid nitrogen pours at −196 °C), and a frozen dummy takes three times the damage from a hit. Then drop the weight on it.
Thermite only catches at 900 °C, hotter than a wood or oil fire burns; lightning, lava or the Heat tool will light it. It burns at 2,800 °C, cuts through metal that melts at 1,540 °C, and leaves molten iron.
C-4 shrugs off fire until 400 °C, but current sets it off at once: lay metal against it and touch the metal with the Spark tool. Its blast radius is nine cells. A barrel of oil goes up above 150 °C, on a hard knock or in a blast.
The test log counts only what your own strokes have a hand in, and whatever those set off, so a scene's own machinery fills nothing. Each day it picks three of your blanks to try, and the first of six new rigs opens at 10 of its 64 entries.
A work order is timed in ticks of the box, not seconds on your clock: it starts paused, so lay your ration out first, slow motion costs nothing, and Clear starts it over. Its result line, with the date, the order, your time and what you used, copies as plain text.
Trophies
15 trophies
Sign in and the ones you earn light up here and on your account.
The box
- Sand melted into glass
- A lamp lit by current
- Called down lightning
- Thermite burned down to molten iron
- Forty blasts in one second
Bodies
- A dummy knocked out
- A limb snapped off
- A dummy frozen stiff
- A rocket lit
The test log
- Ten entries in the test log
- A new rig opened by the test log
- Half the test log filled
- Every entry in the test log
Work orders
- A work order passed
- Work orders passed on seven days
What players say
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From the changelog
What changed
StuStudios 2.2
- Tumblebox’s manual keeps a test log of 64 entries, every change on the element cards and everything the bodies can do, and each day the Box menu holds a work order, the same rig for everyone.
Tumblebox: falling sand, and the dummies that live in it
- Tumblebox opens on the arcade: a test chamber of falling sand where every cell carries a temperature in degrees, the air carries pressure and metal and salt water carry current. Pour, heat, spark and drop things, then read what happened off the thermometer under your cursor, while sawdust-stuffed dummies stand, swim, burn, freeze and snap among crates, barrels, ropes and rockets. Every element’s card is written from the same table the box runs on, and the Box menu holds three scenes and three save slots.
Tumblebox went up on the arcade
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