There is no shortage of extraction shooters right now. The genre has exploded over the last few years, and every new entry has to answer the same question: why play this instead of the dozen other options already installed? SAND: Raiders of Sophie answers with a genuinely clever hook — you pilot a massive walking mech across the fallen desert planet of Sophie, using it as your base, your storage unit, and your weapon all at once.
It’s a legitimately interesting concept. After spending real time with it, though, our takeaway is unfortunately clear: interesting on paper and interesting to play are very different things.
The Loop
Customise a hulking war machine between runs — bolt on cannons, place components, tune it to your squad. The build menu is detailed and clearly the game’s centrepiece.
Head out on expeditions for weapons, ammo, raw materials and entire cannons — all of which feed back into your machine.
Leave the engine running and your Trampler belches black smoke visible to anyone with binoculars. Staying hidden means killing the engine and hoping.
Make it out with your spoils, or lose everything to another crew, the undead Upiórs, or the desert itself.
The Trampler Is a Genuinely Great Idea
Conceptually it’s excellent. The smoke mechanic in particular is a clever piece of design — the thing that makes you powerful is also the thing that makes you visible, so avoiding other players means constantly killing your engine and creeping along on suspicion alone. That’s a good tension, and it’s the sort of idea a smaller studio can build a reputation on.
The build menu backs it up. There’s genuine depth in how and where you place components, and the game clearly expects you to be tweaking your machine constantly between expeditions to suit your playstyle.
And Then You Actually Play It
We respect ambition in game design. But this is ambition without accessibility, and it’s the problem that compounds every other problem in the game. A confusing systems-heavy shooter is survivable if the moment-to-moment play is compelling enough to carry you through the confusion. SAND’s isn’t.
Even after finding our footing, the fun never really arrived. The core loop of scavenging, surviving and extracting is fine, but it never generates the tension or momentum that makes this genre worth the investment — nothing approaching what something like Arc Raiders manages. Expeditions become routine quickly. After a dozen hours, one of us realised they were playing out of obligation rather than genuine interest, which is never a good sign.
A Very Big Map With Very Little In It
Expeditions are long. The very first one took nearly an entire hour, and while there’s real exhilaration in narrowly extracting with a full hold, the general pacing doesn’t support that structure. Because Tramplers can cover huge distances — especially with engine upgrades — the map is enormous. Vast stretches of it simply have nothing interesting in them.
You might get lucky in transit and spot a distant PvP fight, or get pulled into one. Those moments are genuinely good. They’re also few and far between. Much of your time is spent staring at the horizon, sweeping binoculars for anything at all, or staring at a map.
The visuals compound it. There are some gorgeous sights — the gigantic planet Jupiter dominating the northern skybox is a real one — and some Trampler designs have proper personality. But making Sophie a desert planet may come back to haunt the developers, because after a run or two the conclusion is unavoidable: if you’ve seen one sand location, you’ve seen them all. The dunes blur together, the ruins are generic, and in a crowded genre where presentation is how players choose where to spend their time, that’s a serious problem.
The Polish Problem
Credit where it’s due on one front: performance is the area where SAND consistently holds up. It ran well throughout with no meaningful stuttering or frame drops. That’s a baseline expectation rather than a selling point, but plenty of Early Access shooters can’t claim it, so it’s worth acknowledging.
Bring Friends, or Don’t Bother
One more thing worth being direct about: SAND isn’t built for solo players. There’s a matchmaking option, and with enough time you can eventually construct a Trampler manageable by one person. But getting there requires more resources than you start with, which means grinding out several expeditions in machines explicitly designed around three or more people running maintenance.
If you have a dedicated squad, there’s something here. If you don’t, the game is actively working against you from the first run.
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| The Trampler ConceptA walking fortress that’s base, storage and weapon at once is a genuinely clever hook, and the smoke mechanic — where your power source is also what gives you away — is smart design. With a full crew handling guns, repairs and navigation, it hits a real Sea of Thieves rhythm. | No Tutorial At AllThe single biggest problem, and it compounds every other one. Trampler construction, loot routes, extraction — all left to trial and error. Complexity piled on complexity with no foundation explained. Discovery turns into homework. | It’s Simply DullThe loop never generates the tension the genre needs. Expeditions become routine fast, and after a dozen hours we were playing out of obligation rather than interest. Nothing here approaches what Arc Raiders manages. |
| Deep CustomisationThe build menu offers real depth in component placement and loadout tuning, and the game is clearly designed around constant tweaking between runs. If mech-building is your thing, this part delivers. | Enormous, Empty MapTramplers cover big distances so the map is huge — and vast stretches contain nothing. Most of your time is binoculars, horizon and map-staring, punctuated by rare PvP encounters that are genuinely good when they happen. | Rough On Every EdgeJanky Upiór animations, wildly inconsistent fall damage (one tower killed us; nothing else ever did), unreadable ledges, poor weapon feel, visible building seams, and enemies stuck in door textures. |
| Solid PerformanceIt runs well. No meaningful stuttering or frame drops across our time with it. A baseline expectation rather than a selling point, but one plenty of Early Access shooters fail to meet. | Not Built for Solo PlayYou can eventually build a solo-viable Trampler, but only after grinding expeditions in machines designed for three-plus crew. Without a dedicated squad, the game works against you from run one. | Sand, Sand, and More SandJupiter in the skybox is striking and some Trampler designs have personality, but a desert planet means very little environmental variety. See one sand location and you’ve seen them all — a real liability in a genre this crowded. |
The Verdict
Roam a ravaged world in massive walkers, battling players and undead alike in a dusty fight for loot and survival. That’s the pitch, and it’s a good one — SAND: Raiders of Sophie has a genuinely original idea at its centre, and there are flashes where the Trampler concept delivers exactly what it promises.
The problem is that everything surrounding that idea needs work. There’s no tutorial to teach a deeply systems-heavy game. The map is vast and mostly empty. The environments blur into one another. The weapons don’t feel good, the enemies animate poorly, and the technical jank is constant enough to notice. Most damningly, the moment-to-moment play is simply dull — and a compelling core loop could have carried every other flaw on this list.
This is Early Access, and that matters. Hologryph and TowerHaus have content planned and are actively working through community feedback, and we genuinely believe they can turn this around — the foundational idea is strong enough to be worth saving. We’ll happily revisit it.
The honest split: if you have a dedicated squad and a high tolerance for learning things the hard way, there might be something here for you today. Four people crewing a Trampler in a desert firefight is the game working as intended, and it’s fun when it lands.
For everyone else — and especially for solo players — waiting to see how the Early Access period develops is the wiser move. The concept deserves your attention eventually. The current build doesn’t yet earn it.
For more game reviews, check out our full reviews section.
Score Breakdown
