Sandustry is an automation and building sandbox game now available in early access. In development by Lantto Games with publishing by Hooded Horse (Fogpiercer, Manor Lords), create increasingly complex factory systems to harvest sand and other materials for gold to advance your builds. You’ll also uncover more about the ancient civilization on the planet as you dig deeper to discover mysteries buried below. It is currently only available via Steam for PC, Mac, and SteamOS/Linux.
No House on a Rock Here, But Factory Below the Sand
Building and automation games come in all shapes and sizes. For me, StarRupture, Satisfactory, Factorio and RimWorld come to mind. So what’s this little pixel game Sandustry about? How can I take tiny pixels and make my own factory? Well let’s take a look together in the early access preview below.
Gameplay
Sandustry is a building and automation game without the usual hinderances of the genre. In most building and automation games, you have to gather resources in order to use them to build and advance your factory. Instead, here you are able to build parts and pieces such as conveyor belts, filters, and more as long as you have unlocked them via research. Of course how you unlock that research starts with the very namesake of the game – sand! Start out your work spelunking into the planet by collecting sand, making it wet, and filtering out the gold within. Gold is the primary resource that unlocks research of parts and machinery which then leads to more ways to gather and process even more products into gold.
The basic drive of the game is fairly simple – industrialize! Explore the planet’s surface, depths and the space in between to find ancient relics and more rare materials. Create any factory design you can come up with using the parts and machinery at your disposal. Found relics add to a passive tree that is split into two parts. Fluxite is another ore-type currency that works in tandem with your unlocks by improving some of them passively. For example, one of the first upgrades you can get is to significantly increase the pixel area that your grabber is capable of collecting. In Sandustry, each pixel is a resource so gathering as much as you can at once is quite beneficial.
Another part of Sandustry I enjoy is the movement. One of the first research items allows you to activate a hover pack for mobility. Hovering allows fluid movement through parts of your construction. The ability to pass through everything rather than having to go around keeps you from accidentally boxing yourself in while also allowing you to full control of where resources are going. I also enjoy being able to build and automate without having to worry about running out of one resource or another that my build is completely dependent on. Shifting your approach is a quick fix to lack of resources. I lost track of the number of times I built up and tore down conveyor belts, filters, collecting areas and the like.
Graphics & Audio
I have been playing Sandustry on PC. It says that it is playable for Steam Deck but I chose to stick to my desktop for the sake of precision. The pixel style, especially with each pixel counting as one resource, is done very will in this game. I’m sure it’s not a burden on the Deck, but pixels are only so big and my eyes are only getting older. Really though the game looks great and plays smoothly as much as anyone could want it to.
The audio track is simple like the art style. I feel like that tends to be the norm in this regard. Simple tracks for simple visuals. Not that it’s a bad thing. It just means less distractions while I mine and profit from pillaging the planet!
Longevity
I’m not entirely sure how much longevity Sandustry has at this point since it is just hitting early access. There’s obviously enough depth there to provide more than your money’s worth of entertainment. I didn’t see any specific mention of whether or not the planet is procedurally generated and did not start a new game to check, but it wouldn’t surprise me either way in the slightest.
Final Thoughts
If you enjoy building and automation games, Sandustry isn’t something to pass up on. Even having just released into early access, it’s pulling a solid overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. I have barely scratched the surface myself but am looking forward to delving deeper and discovering more of what makes the game unique. Be sure to check it out!
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
If you enjoy this review, be sure to check out my other reviews here.
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