The Tool

The Tool is a casual puzzle game about combining objects and running simulations. You arrange living things, plants, planetary systems and microscopic chemical structures into combinations, then launch them into a gravitational simulation and name the resulting sets.

Create and share

You can collect word packages into statements and share them through the Internet cloud. You can also download other players’ messages and unpack their contents. Saved tools can be reused in larger meta-tools, letting you combine them into further creations.

A warning about accumulation

The game explores the idea of human progress through the additive accumulation of tools and their properties. This principle conflicts with the law of conservation of mass and could eventually destroy the human ecosystem. The game uses its simulations to make visible the scale of processes that can be difficult to grasp, from the planetary to the microscopic, and suggests that adding properties does not always improve a tool.