Really exciting work! This reminds me a lot of Physarum (slime mold) simulations popularized by media artists like Sage Jensen[1]. The combination of explicitly defined particles along with fields that those particles can interact with is proving to be a fascinating technique!

[1]: https://cargocollective.com/sagejenson/physarum

Related:

Particle Lenia: Self Organising Particles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108724 - Dec 2022 (2 comments)