RTFA: http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

This web game is to use the mouse to feed Wind powder, the powder dance to enjoy the game.

Dan-Ball has released Powder Game 5.6! That’s right – not 5.1, but 5.6, which includes a bunch of new items like soap, thunder, and laser. The maximum dot count is 20,000 but the performance is great on the new version.

If you have never played Powder Game, then you might not initially understand how to “Have fun” with it… Well, let me explain. It’s a physics simulator, so you set up these cool scenarios and see how they play out. If you’ve ever played with a marble run, then you know what I mean.

In the picture below, I set up a simple holder for water, oil, and magma. I put a metal container around each one, and I put a clone block below each one. This is a recipe for disaster!

Basically, the cloner makes tons of dots out of whatever drops onto it. Then, the cloned dots fall onto the bottom of the screen and mix. Here’s where the magic of Powder Game comes in: each dot has different behaviors when they interact. The oil and the magma create fire and wind, which mixes everything up. The water and magma create stone. The water rusts the metal, the magma melts the metal, etc…

The dots all behave somewhat realistically, insofar as they have physical properties, and the simulator does a good job of staying true to the “meaning” of the dots. The end result is a sort of sandbox or playground that lets you create all sorts of great interactions. …and it’s up to you to figure out how you, personally, “have fun” with this sort of environment.

This sort of mechanism is similar to the new game from Namco, Noby Noby Boy. In NNB, you basically just walk around and mess with the universe:

There is no explicit goal in Noby Noby Boy, any more so than Powder Game has a goal. …and yet, these are definitely “games.” The underlying principle is that you need to find your own fun; the game is what you make of it. From an article by Matt Leone on 1up.com:

…the most common criticism of Noby Noby Boy around the office is that the game doesn’t set enough goals for players — it’s less of a game, and more of a playground. Katamari was an unusual mechanic wrapped inside traditional objectives and time limits, while Noby Noby Boy is an unusual mechanic without any of those trappings. But I’ve been playing the game almost nonstop for the past few days, and have been trying to figure out why I keep playing. And I think it comes down to a feeling that there’s always something new to discover.

A great way to find some fun is to watch videos of other people having fun. Here’s a Vacuum Cleaner, that was built with an older version of Powder Game:

Powder Game, which was originally released in 2002, has this “fun” element nailed. One time in 2006, I spent 6 hours making a volcano, filling it with gunpowder and oil, drawing intestinal underground tunnels for magma to flow through…

If I spend 6 hours moving little virtual dots around to make an imaginary volcano, does that make me a freak? Absolutely not! … which is the whole point of finding your own fun. I thought it was fun, and I don’t need some game designer to give me instructions, objectives, or goals in order to have fun.

What is your “fun” like?

RTFA: http://wunderland.com/WhatsOld/2008/WN.11.06.08.ht…

As those who’ve read the most recent issue of Notes From The Lab have already heard, we are on the brink of releasing an updated version of Fluxx! Yes, Fluxx version 4.0 is now at the printer! It’ll be out in time for the holidays!

Here are the details of what’s new in Fluxx Version 4.0:

• Colorized and Improved Artwork: Under the direction of Todd Cameron Hamilton (who did the artwork for Monty Python Fluxx), my classic line drawings have been given a great new full-color look. Three of the Keepers — Dreams, Money, and the Moon — have been redrawn entirely. Dreams has a clearer vision, Money now has better-looking coins and a cost of living increase (it features a twenty now instead of a $5 bill), and the Moon has gone from a simple crescent to a really cool looking cratered sphere.
• More Cards: As with Zombie and Monty Python Fluxx, version 4.0 will include 100 cards (instead of 84).
• New Cards: Some of the cards being added with this upgrade have been available in other ways before, such as the Party and the Radioactive Potato (which debuted in the 10th Anniversary Party Pack). The set also includes some previously retired cards, like Taxes and the Eye, and some totally new cards, like a Keeper called the Cosmos and a New Rule called You Also Need a Baked Potato.
• Creepers: Fluxx 4.0 will include 4 Creepers (and some other little changes to help you cope with them). In addition to the ever-popular Radioactive Potato, 3 classic Keepers have been reclassified as Creepers: War, Death, and Taxes. In retrospect, those concepts really aren’t good material for Keeper, making much more sense as Creepers, but we didn’t have any other way to represent negative stuff until the Zombie uprising. Now it seems obvious that these cards should be Creepers, and in their new incarnations, they each have special properties. (You can’t have Peace if you have War, i.e. you get to push War to another player if you have Peace; Taxes destroys Money if you have them both on the table, but goes away in the process; and Death is now killing machine which destroys itself after it kills off all of your other Keepers & Creepers, one by one.)
• New Packaging: Fluxx 4.0 will be sold in the same newly-styled two-piece box Monty Python Fluxx comes in. The new box features a purple starfield background and bold cosmic-looking front cover artwork. The back of the box features a great new cartoon of three people playing Fluxx.
• New Rulesheet: The bigger box also allows for a bigger rulesheet, with a great new Frequently Asked Questions section.
• New Type of Card: As you may already know, I thought of another new type of card a few months ago: the Meta Rule. This special new type of card is like a formalized house rule: assuming everyone agrees, Meta Rule cards are placed on the table with the Basic Rules card, and they stay in force throughout the entire game. We’re saving some of my crazier Meta Rule ideas for a future release, so Fluxx 4.0 will launch the concept with just one Meta Rule, called Rules Escalation (which we’ve been using during Tournaments since Keith Baker ran them for us at our first Origins, in 1997).

So there you go, a detailed look at what’s inside Fluxx 4.0. Ask for it at your favorite game store in early December!

Oooooooooo. I’m a huge fan of Fluxx, and of Looney Labs in general. Their websites are endless collections of personal and gaming items, and I surmise that they basically live for the awesome games they publish. From Andrew Looney’s wikipedia entry:

Looney, his wife Kristin Looney, and Alison Frane together run the games company Looney Labs, which has published most of his game designs, such as Fluxx, Chrononauts, and the Icehouse game system.

Before Looney and his wife started Looney Labs, they both worked at NASA, where in 1993 some of Looney’s software was launched into orbit as part of the repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope. He then went on to a brief career as a game programmer at Magnet Interactive Studios, where he created that company’s only entry to the market, Icebreaker.

I know, it reads like a press release, but here’s something a little different about Andrew Looney. There’s a cat … on his shoulder!