Sand Slides is a game based around a cellular automata algorithm that
simulates falling grains of sand. Sand enters the play area from one of three
hoppers at the top of the screen which slowly fill and then dump the sand into
the interactive part of the screen. It’s then the player’s job to draw lines
which creates ‘slides’ or ‘buckets’ to hold the sand temporarily until it is
time to slide the correct colored sand into the matching collector at the
bottom of the screen. The player can only have three lines on screen at the
same time, with the oldest line being removed when a new line is drawn.

Whilst it sounds simple on the face of it, things get tricky as more sand
enters the play area and you must get creative and also be quick witted in
order to keep things moving. Dump sand into the wrong colored collector and
you will lose grains from your grain counter at the top, when that reaches
zero its game over. Higher scores can be achieved by collecting 2 or more
colors of sand at the same time to build up the combo bonus.

This is the main game mode in a nutshell and there are several variations of
the same, each with lower grain counters which leave less room for error.
There is also a Challenge mode which see’s the player trying to score as many
points as possible in a set number of sand drops. Games can be played 5
minutes here or there as the game always saves and resumes where you left off.

Sand Slides