July 22, 2024

I’ve gone through and taken a look at all the daily games on offer.  Wordle, Crosswords, little geometric puzzles you click to rotate tetraminos?  Everything anyone could want.

Except for one glaring omission.  Not enough particle physics.

Sure, there was that one day in Connections where the purple category was 938.2, 939.6, 0.511, and 125,000 (masses of subatomic particles in MeV/c^2).  But I mean *aside* from that.

Well, you’re in luck, because in addition to developing Agent Higgs 2 for an obscenely long time (though still at a smaller budget than the LHC, so I’ll take it) — I am now releasing Daily Higgs levels.

Or, namely, I’ve been releasing them for about 8 months now.  They’ve been a great test-bed of trying out new game mechanics, and testing puzzle design.

So work it into your daily routine.  Solve a little crossword, then perform some intricate particle physics experiments.

Is Agent Higgs 2 still on it’s way?  Absolutely!  Getting closer every day.  But for today, and tomorrow, and the next day, you’re welcome to try your hand at the Daily Higgs.

-Andy

July 17, 2024

Do you like science games and simulations? Wow, I sure hope so — and if that’s the case I’m delighted to share a project I’ve been working on.

The Science Playground!

(What, you got that from the title? Ah, gotta get drama some other way…)

This is a curated list of super cool interactive science projects from around the web. So you’re just clicks away from:

• Smashing planets together
• Building working circuits
• Understanding Bell’s Inequality (better)
• Learning all about the evolutionary tree of life.

Fun stuff, right? I’ve been making science games/toys for a while, and over the years I’ve come across a whole bunch of cool stuff that *other* people have made. And often it’s so scattered across the internet, hard to find, or living quietly on personal pages. So I want to promote it all, and make these projects easier to find and play!

Each of us creators are a piece of a bigger puzzle. And I’m pretty excited about the puzzle.

-Andy

December 1, 2023

Two quick things to share. Three? Two quick ones, one long one? Okay, a long poorly edted intro, followed by two quick things and one medium thing. Great! I’m good at blogging.

Daily Higgs

I’ve been posting some Higgs levels each day – resetting at midnight eastern time (US). I know it’s been a while waiting for the *full* game, so I figure why not post a level each day. Why not indeed. Go try it out! The same URL works each day. (Pictured here is the level for December 1st… which may or may not be today anymore?)

Feel Bad Friday

The weekly video series has returned. I mean, the every-four-years video series has returned! Listen, I got another subscription to one of those video recording programs… so I’m hoping I’ll use it for more than just the one video – but no promises. That all said, this week I played a level in The Electric Shocktopus: Choose Your Own Adventure, created and shared by player “1235” in the Discord server.

You can see how I do here.

And to try this level yourself, you can follow this link.

Agent Higgs 2

Were you expecting a game? So was I! With something like a September 2023 release – which let me check the clock – I don’t think is going to happen.

Two things have happened – one, life’s been, as always, extra busy so things are going slower than I’d like. And two, there’s more to do than I expected. I put the game in for a round of playtesting, and came away from it not with the specific, detailed bits of feedback I had hoped for… but rather ideas for how to change things in broader ways. Rearranging the chapters, changing how fast the new physics is introduced, etc.

The quick description is that the game was originally envisioned a bit like Candy Crush, where you just have a thousand levels you can play somewhat endlessly.

But what I’m coming around on is that if this is an educational game, or at least used for folks more interested in the physics than the puzzles, I don’t want to gate the science behind extra puzzles. Some folks may just want to play a few dozen levels and feel like they’ve learned something.

Which means, I’m trying to rearrange things right now to make it easier to branch in different directions. If you want to play challenge levels – they’ll be there. But they’ll be fewer required levels to get you through each chapter. At least that’s my thought.

And with the daily levels that I’m releasing, I’m hoping to make the mechanics in the game *mostly* approachable enough that someone can understand them without doing a lot of training in the game. If you see quarks, maybe their behavior is clear and sensible, even if I tend to hold those levels until later in the game.

That’s a long (medium?) way of saying the game is still very much in development. If you’d like to see behind-the-scenes, you’re always welcome in the TestTubeGames Discord server, linked somewhere at the top of the page here.

Thanks for reading, thanks for playing, and thanks for your support!

-Andy

July 10, 2023

Work continues on Agent Higgs 2 — my upcoming particle physics game that will take you into a world of mystery, drama, and physics-based puzzles.

If you’ve played the original game – and if you’re reading this, that seems likely – here’s some new stuff you can look forward to:

Protons + Neutrons

Move ’em, slide ’em, and stick ’em into a nucleus.

Holes and Broken Boxes

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supercollider, along come new tiles and new puzzles.

Bigger Booms

The size of explosions is now mass-dependent, given that whole E=mc² thing that everybody is talking about.

Drama and Intrigue

Will Higgs escape? Who’s that mysterious character? What are the scientists up to? We’ll find out soon enough.

Ah yes, soon enough… The release date is yet to be nailed down, but if you’d like to know the latest, feel free to join me/us in the Discord!

-Andy

May 3, 2023

Agent Higgs is back – and with more particles than ever. Protons, neutrons, quarks – and more – join Higgs as he tries to escape from the Standard Model.

The game will be available on phones, as with the first one, but also PC/Mac/Web. The release date isn’t set quite yet – but it’s pretty deep in development. So keep your eyes tuned here for more info. Or if you want to be the most up-to-date possible – and possibly playtest? – join us in the Discord.

-Andy

April 5, 2023

Listen, I know I’m talking your ear off with all these blog posts! I apologize. I’ll do them less frequently.

But — if you’re not following along in the Discord, or my Mastodon account, or creepily peeking over my shoulder with your telephoto lens from a nearby building – you could be forgiven for not knowing what’s happening here at TestTubeGames headquarters.

So here’s an update on one of my current projects…

Dark Matter Explainer

Working with Shaun Hotchkiss (of Cosmology Talks fame) and Richard Easther (of Auckland University fame) to build a Dark Matter simulator/explainer. Picture “Why do Astronauts Float?“, but for Dark Matter.

Turns out, oddly, the hard part isn’t modelling Dark Matter. Gravity Simulator does a pretty good job of that already! Dark Matter is notorious for just feeling the force of gravity… which is what those planets do, too. Sure, maybe Dark Matter is a bit more spread out than a planet, but the same rules apply.

No, the hard thing is recreating Normal Matter. Dreadful stuff, honestly. It clumps and bounces and pushes with electromagnetic forces. The universe would be better off without it, I say. But, in order to understand Dark Matter, I suppose we should understand Normal Matter.

So that’s where my work is right now, building a simulation that can handle Dark and Normal Matter — all while running in the browser and spitting beautiful bon mots at you. “Try changing how much dark matter we have.” Inspirational.

Follow along in the aforementioned Discord, or Mastodon, or just hope beyond hope that I remember to post here sometime this decade.

A Bit of Fun

Since you deserve it, no really, you’ve earned it! – here’s a little level to test your Electric Shocktopus skills.

Give it a play (for free! today! in your browser!) — by clicking here.

And go congratulate James, the creator of the fun level, by joining us in the forums.

That’s all for now. Until next time — may your internal pressure overpower your gravitational attraction!

-Andy

February 15, 2022

Quick note to start – if you want to keep up-to-date on the latest TestTubeGames goings-on – I’d suggest you keep an eye on my Twitter feed or join the Discord. This space will likely just be for larger announcements, at least for the moment.

As of December, it was 10 years since Velocity Raptor’s initial release. So to mark the occasion, I released a brand new relativistic toy: Veloc-t in Space!

Race through the solar system (and beyond) at nearly the speed of light. Along the way, get a close look at the length contraction and weird time-travel effects that special relativity brings. It is available to play for free here: play Veloc-t in Space.

If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane for Velocity Raptor, here’s a Twitter thread where I did some navel gazing about its past, present, and future.

-Andy

November 29, 2020

It was ten years ago, on this day, that I first launched TestTubeGames. Assuming negligible time dilation. And that, to me, feels like the right time to take a look back. Try to remember some of the key events in the past decade.

2010 – the origins

In November 2010, I launched this site. It started with the first version of the Gravity Simulator… one of my very original projects. And to this day, still one of the most popular. There actually was another project of mine out by then, though: the Pocket Slide Rule app. (I guess that didn’t warrant a site launch.) At the time, I was still working a full time job – as an educator at a museum. And it was there, in fact, that I first got started building animations and simulations, to use in some of our museum programs.

2011

In December of 2011, I released Velocity Raptor. It was my first game, and took me *years* to develop. So the release was a big event. For me, at least. The game would go on to win a science visualization award from the National Science Foundation. The response to Velocity Raptor (and the fact that even after building and releasing such a complex game, I didn’t want to tear my hair out) helped give me an early boost of confidence that, hey, maybe I should keep doing this.

2012

The release of Velocity Raptor the previous year led to the big event from this year: leaving my job, and doing game development full time. It was a big leap, but one I knew I wanted to do.

I got right to work, and built one of my speediest projects right out of the gate, releasing Agent Higgs in the middle of 2012. As fate would have it, releasing it just weeks before the discovery of the Higgs boson. The game even got mentioned… err, not by name, but still… in the New York Times. It was also the first time I was *selling* a game, instead of just releasing it for free. And, uh, that was quite a learning experience. Turns out it was hard, even then, to get many sales on the app store.

2013

After Higgs, I floated around a bit trying to find my next project. There was the ill-fated Quantum Kitty, that never saw the light of day. And a few other small projects, many of which hit dead-ends.

This was the year I released the first version of The Fittest. I also created the TestTubeGames forums, which breathed a whole lotta fresh air into my work. And in June of that year, I started working with Unity. It was this game-building tool that I would use to create all my later work.

2014

I rebuilt my first project, the Gravity Simulator, in Unity, and released it in March. This was the start of selling things in places other than the app store. It was also the start of my iterative streak — where I, uh, tend to revisit old projects *a lot*.

In 2014, I also released the first version of Bond Breaker – a game built in collaboration with the CaSTL research group.

2015

Early this year I joined the Indie Game Collective, a group of other independent developers that shared a co-working space. It has been an invaluable community.

Also this year, I got more into contract work, building the software for an exhibit at a local museum.

And, oh, also this year, I had a kid.

2016

I started dabbling in creating educational videos this year, starting with one about parallel wires.

TestTubeGames also went international this year, taking me to a science game conference in Paris.

And then that year, I released the two games you see in the above conference photo. The Electric Shocktopus, and Bond Breaker 2.0.

Not a small year.

2017 – 2018

It was around this point that things took a turn for the contract-ual, and I sought out more client work. I did a couple years of work on a games project at Northeastern, and did a few projects for museum exhibits. Financial stability was the name of the game, here. (Figuratively)

2019

It was around this time that I came back from contract-work-land. And, boy, does it show. I released a flurry of new little projects this year: Black Hole Launcher, Swing Explorer, Why do Astronauts Float.

And this was the year I launched my Discord. Just like the forums had years before, this was a huge boon to me. The community aspect has always been pretty central to TTG.

2020

The first part of the year I spent hard at work on A Sailor’s Life for Me, yet another contract project for a local museum.

That wrapped right around the time, uh, the world got especially weird. There are some other highlights from this year, though.

Evolving Art! With the help of the folks in the Discord server, we voted some art through 100 generations, finally giving me this great piece of art to frame.

Velocity Raptor! I’ve been hard at work on a new version of Velocity Raptor — which has been scope creeped beyond all recognition. For instance:

Or running through the solar system, perhaps:

And then there’s Agent Higgs, which is going to be making a comeback, too:

Beyond

Ha, this is a post about the past, not the future.

A big thanks to everyone who has been along with me for this journey. Every player, every commenter (well, some commenters), every member who joined the community here – those are the things that really keep me going. And here’s to ten more years of science games.

-Andy

August 31, 2019

Want to sport your love of relativistic dinosaurs, but aren’t quite ready to go all-in for a tattoo just yet?

May I suggest a nice enamel pin?

I put in an order of Velocity Raptor pins, and she looks great on my messenger bag.  If you’re interested in picking up one, too, you can go to our newly-created merch page.  And if you’ve got your own merch ideas, there’s a survey you can take, too.

-Andy

June 6, 2019

I released a new project – which hits on one of my favorite little quirks of science… and science teaching.

With a son who’s *super* into space and astronauts, the topic of them floating comes up a lot.  In books, in videos, in conversations.  And I always find it fascinating to read the ways people talk about this.

Because the reason is actually pretty weird.

And hard to describe concisely.

And I’m always interested to see whether the latest kids book we’re leafing through will (a) avoid the issue of ‘why’, (b) get it totally wrong, or (c) spend a weirdly long time technically trying to explain it.

Anyway… on to the main point here.  Why *do* astronauts float in space?  And how would you explain it to someone?

Here’s how *I* would, at least:

So pop on over and check out my explainer / toy: “Why do astronauts float?”

-Andy