Pixel Rain

Pixel Rain is a falling-sand physics sandbox where you paint materials onto a giant grid and watch their cells interact according to their own rules. There is no campaign, fail state or pressure; you can experiment with the materials and observe what happens.

Materials and reactions

The game has over 400 paintable materials and brush presets. Sand piles and settles, water flows and pools, and lava turns water into steam, melts ice and ignites nearby materials. Acid corrodes stone, metal and crystal; oil floats on water and catches fire easily; crystal grows from water and ice; plants feed on water and spread; plasma decays into sparks; void erases what it touches; and magnets pull nearby metal cells toward them.

Other materials include paint, slime, foam, snow, ice, smoke, sparks, stone and metal, as well as concrete, salt, sawdust, charged crystal, living wood and brimstone. You can combine any two materials to discover new ones, with over 50 recipes to find.

Paint and simulate

The simulation runs at 60 FPS on a dynamic grid of up to about 620 × 480 cells. You can adjust gravity, flow speed, brush size and zoom, tune brush scatter, sparkle and jitter, and set up six customizable quick-slot brushes. A built-in tutorial introduces the game, and you can customize the color palette and lobby theme.

Music and recording

Three procedurally synthesized music modes—Rain, Magma and Aurora—accompany sound effects generated in real time for each material. You can export MP4 clips with a one-button recording feature, or use Showcase cinematic mode, which finds the most active part of your canvas and records it automatically.

Saves and creations

You can save and load canvases, with saves synced across devices through Steam Cloud. The game also includes over 100 Steam achievements with progress bars and in-game notifications. Built-in editors let you create materials, brushes and animations, while a code editor in DevMode provides another way to make materials and share them through Steam Workshop or subscribe to community creations.