# Sandboxels

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Sandboxels and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free browser sandbox where combining materials produces surprising results, such as steam through sand. Caveat: the neal.fun version runs laggier and looks worse.

## Why people recommend it

- Endless experimenting by combining materials (2 comments): "The entire fun is about figuring out what you can do by combining stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46956899)) "This gives me more ways to play with it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949940))
- Intense, time-consuming fun (2 comments): "Probably going to spend the next several hours getting zero useful RL tasks done now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949962)) "this one really dials things up to eleven" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949809))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Hole Punch](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hole-punch.md): 27 recommend
- [2D Vehicles](https://hackerapproved.com/p/2d-vehicles.md): 6 recommend
- [A Slower Speed of Light by MIT Game Lab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/a-slower-speed-of-light.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Sandboxels", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sandboxels/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).