STILL RICE

A heap of rice in two colours sits at the top of the table, and two long sticks reach in from the bottom corners. Pull every grain down into the box of its colour.

It's modelled on the rice-sorting videos where someone separates grains with chopsticks, one at a time. Every grain here is its own small physical object, up to 3,000 of them, simulated live in your browser, so a grain rolls, catches on its neighbours and settles into a pile the way rice does.

How to play

Hover to aim a stick, press to lower its tip, drag, and let go to lift it. Each stick works its own half of the table.

Press just behind a grain at the edge of the heap and pull it toward you, slowly, so the tip carries it. Start a little further into the heap and a few come out together.

The clock starts when a stick first touches a grain and stops once every grain lies still in its own box. Your best time for each shape and size is kept. If you'd rather play without a clock, choose Calm.

– Shift: slow the tips for fine work

– A or D: use the left or right stick; the right mouse button presses with the other one

– Mouse wheel: zoom; F fits the view again

– Space: pause; R: a new batch

On a touch screen, use one finger per stick. Fine slows the tips, and Zoom lets you pinch and drag the view.

What's in it

– Six shapes (heart, band, square, circle, star and a pile), from 50 to 3,000 grains

– Six rice pairs, from red and white to black and yellow

– Six sticks: a steel needle, bamboo, dark wood, black and vermilion lacquer, and jade

– A charcoal mat or white paper to sort on

– Timed, with a best time for every shape and size, or Calm, with no clock at all

– Replay the same heap from the start

– Optional box outlines, an outline on grains in the wrong box, and neat piles that square up as they settle

– Sound made from the grains themselves as they tick against each other, not recordings

What it runs on

Still Rice needs a browser with WebGPU:

– Chrome or Edge 113 or later on Windows, macOS or ChromeOS

– Safari 26 or later on a Mac with macOS Tahoe, an iPhone or an iPad

– Firefox 141 or later on Windows, 145 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac

– Chrome 121 or later on Android 12 or later

– Chrome on Linux with a recent Intel GPU, or NVIDIA on Wayland

If the game says it needs WebGPU in one of these, check that hardware acceleration is switched on in the browser's settings and that your graphics driver is up to date.

It plays best with a mouse on a desktop or laptop.

Privacy

Still Rice collects nothing and sends nothing. Your settings and best times stay in your browser, and some browsers, such as Safari and Brave, may clear them.

Credits

Made by Wanderung Studios. Typefaces: Mochiy Pop One and M PLUS Rounded 1c, under the SIL Open Font License.

There are no AI-generated images or sounds: every grain, shadow and sound is computed as you play.