Barns & Neutrons
A cozy, honest expedition across the real Table of Nuclides — the anti-spreadsheet.
Barns & Neutrons is a calm puzzle game about the real Table of Nuclides. You begin on a tiny lit island of known isotopes, and each step into the dark is a small, elegant physics puzzle — capture a neutron, coax a decay. The reward is discovery: a new nuclide lights up and its Compendium entry unfolds. It is our flagship edutainment title, and it shares its DNA with our founder’s open-source GEANT4 radiation labs.
What makes it different
Discovery is the loop
No linear tech tree. You explore a real, enormous map of ~3,300 nuclides. Completionism and pure curiosity pull you deeper, with no timers and no game-overs.
Honest physics
When reality and a cuter lie compete, reality wins — then we make reality beautiful. Neutron scattering is forward-peaked at fast energies because it actually is.
Failure is serendipity
Miss a neutron capture and the nucleus does what it really would — maybe a decay instead. You discover a different nuclide and learn real behavior. No punishment, only discovery.
The Compendium
Every discovered isotope unlocks a card: real uses, half-lives, Q-values, and a link to a cornerstone paper (Fermi, Chadwick, Hahn & Strassmann). You learn the history, not just the facts.
A 3D tabletop, not a spreadsheet
A tilted, extruded ceramic-tile board with a glowing valley of stability and dramatic discovery vignettes. Cozy, warm, and tactile.
Open core
The physics, data, and code are open; the art, prose, and Compendium illustrations are ours. Facts aren't copyrightable, and we cite them anyway.
Under the Hood
- Engine: Godot 4, one codebase for desktop and mobile.
- The board: all ~3,300 nuclides rendered in a single 3D instance, with a glowing valley of stability.
- Ground truth: nuclear data from ENDF/B-VIII.0, IAEA, and NIST, with clickable citations in-game.
- Honest model: real cross-sections, real decay modes, real moderation physics.
FAQ
What is Barns & Neutrons?
A cozy exploration-puzzle game set on the real Table of Nuclides — the grid of every known isotope. You start on a small island of known nuclides and each step into the dark is a small physics puzzle: capture a neutron, coax a decay. The reward is discovery, as a new nuclide lights up and its Compendium entry unfolds.
Is it educational?
Yes, but through play, not lectures. Every animation reflects real physics, and discoveries unlock real-world context (Tc-99m in medical imaging, Am-241 in smoke detectors, C-14 in dating) along with half-lives, Q-values, and cornerstone papers. The data is grounded in open sources like ENDF, IAEA, and NIST.
What does “Barns” mean?
A barn is the real unit of nuclear cross-section (10⁻²⁴ cm²) — a measure of how likely a nucleus is to interact with a neutron. The neutron-capture puzzles are literally about tuning energy to hit that cross-section.
What platforms will it be on?
It is built in Godot for desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux) and mobile (iOS, Android).
When is it out?
It is in active development. The first playable slice (the Mo-99 → Tc-99m neighborhood) is the current milestone. Follow Such Software for release news.
Curious about the science behind it? See our nuclear & radiation modeling work.