| Sand | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Set on the post-apocalyptic planet Sophie, SAND lets players build, customize, and battle with massive Tramplers in a fight for survival and riches. Read on to learn how it plays, what it’s about, and everything else we know so far.
Sand Gameplay
Trampler Customization
Tramplers serve as the core of SAND’s gameplay, functioning as both transport and base of operations. Players can construct and customize their Tramplers using a variety of modular components, including engines, storage compartments, weapons, and living quarters. Designs can be saved as blueprints, allowing players to rebuild destroyed Tramplers without starting from scratch. Tramplers are essential for traversing Sophie’s landscape, providing mobility, protection, and storage for looted resources.
Exploration and Environmental Hazards
Sophie is an expansive open world featuring large cities, ruins, and procedural terrain. The remnants of Austro-Hungarian architecture and industry scatter the landscape, offering opportunities for exploration and scavenging. The environment is hostile, with extreme weather conditions, day-night cycles, and unknown dangers lurking beneath the sands. Players must navigate these hazards while managing their Tramplers’ resources, such as fuel and durability.
PvPvE Combat
Combat in SAND takes place in both first-person and vehicle-based formats. Players can engage in firefights on foot, using a variety of weapons, or operate Tramplers equipped with mounted artillery to engage in large-scale battles. The game features both PvP and PvE encounters.
Looting and Extraction
Survival in SAND revolves around acquiring valuable resources and successfully extracting them. Players can loot abandoned structures, uncover hidden caches, and gather materials from defeated enemies.
Sand Story
The Fall of Sophie
SAND is set on Sophie, a planet once colonized by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in an alternate history where early advancements in space travel allowed humanity to expand beyond Earth by 1910. Sophie was a resource-rich world, intended to be a beacon of imperial prosperity, but an ecological disaster of unknown origin forced a rapid evacuation. The settlers abandoned their cities, industries, and dreams, leaving behind only the skeletal remains of a once-thriving colony.
The Return to the Wasteland
Decades after the fall, a new wave of settlers has begun returning to Sophie, lured by the promise of wealth hidden beneath its sands. These returnees are primarily Galicians, a marginalized ethnic group from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were originally promised land on Sophie as a reward for their labor in constructing the planet’s settlements. Now, driven by desperation, historical grievances, and sheer determination, they risk everything to claim what they believe is rightfully theirs.
Central to this return are the Tramplers—massive mechanical walkers that were originally designed for transporting construction materials. With civilization on Sophie reduced to scattered ruins, Tramplers have become the primary means of survival, functioning as mobile fortresses for scavengers, pirates, and mercenaries. Over time, Tramplers have taken on a near-mythical status among their operators, personalized and revered like steeds or weapons of war.
Sand Similar Games
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Helldivers 2 PvE, Squad-Based Shooter |
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Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone Shooter, RPG |
