Dan Dixon used to work at Surreal Studios where he was a programmer for The Suffering, which graphically brought to life the horrors of prison. The sequel then graphically brought to life the horrors of Baltimore. In both cases, demons were added to enhance the horror-ness.

Dixon has since left Surreal, but his latest creation offers a graphical presentation of horror on an even larger scale than Baltimore. And he doesn't even need demons to do it. Dixon's Universe Sandbox graphically brings to life how utterly screwed we are when the Andromeda Galaxy smacks into the Milky Way. Our only hope is for God to nerf the Andromeda Galaxy at some point over the next 2.5 billion years.

However, Universe Sandbox isn't just an astronomical horror game. It's also a cool little Newtonian physics toy that lets you tour around the universe. Colliding galaxies is just the beginning. Run through a short tutorial on the controls and then jump into the "Fun Things To Do" section, where Dixon shows you some nifty ways to mess up various heavenly bodies.

You can introduce rogue stars and planets, flinging Uranus past Saturn's rings or bouncing alien suns off our own to see how the planets get confused. You can watch moons from competing planets battle it out like billiard balls or just blow up an asteroid and watch the pieces go their own way. You can adorn our own moon with its own lovely Saturnine rings and watch the Earth steal them with its jealous gravity. Load up all our planets clustered into one group to see the size comparisons (this never fails to amaze me) and then switch on gravity to see Jupiter swallow them all.

The trial is free to download and play for an hour, at which point Dixon asks you to contribute whatever you think it's worth. At which point, he'll send you a pair of glasses that let you enjoy the 3D mode, in case you can't find the ones you got with Sly Cooper 3.

Thanks to tiohn for finding this one!