https://natebuel29.github.io/pixel-simulation/
A couple of months ago I picked up the game Noita again. Noita is a rougelite game built in a falling sand engine and is one of the most technologically impressive games I've played because every pixel is simulated. I was inspired by this game to create my own falling sand simulation and engine because hey, why not? I choose to implement this project in core JS and HTML because then I can focus on learning the cellular automata rules used in falling sand simulation games. The trade-off is that JS isn't as fast as other languages. My long-term goal is to now use what I've learned to implement a falling sand sim in C++ using OpenGL.
https://maxbittker.com/making-sandspiel - creator of sandspiel has an awesome blog that helped me understand the rules and logic needed to implement sim
Noita GDC Vid - A dev from Nolla games discusses the creation of Noita and the Falling Everything game engine