SAND: Raiders of Sophie arrived in early access and brought us access to a desert planet where every resource is extremely important, and the player’s metal monstrosities won’t survive that long.
SAND: Raiders of Sophine is the latest in the series extraction shooter on the market. This title was released in early accessu and the development studio hopes to attract enough players to bring their complete ideas to our screens. And for the past few weeks, we’ve been trying our hand at controlling the game’s large mechanized monstrosities to see if there’s anything special about it.
The plot of the game is set on a planet that was hit by a drought and became like a desert. Your task is to go to the planet and collect resources so that you can successfully upgrade your Tramplers on your way back, huge old things that serve as armed bases and vehicles at the same time. There are many resources – from common parts to ammunition to rare items that help build the Trampler.
At the beginning you have three blueprints for Tramples, already predetermined by appearance. From those that are suitable for one person to those that can accommodate up to six people in their rooms. Tramplers are huge, highly noticeable and noisy machines that bring a certain dimension to your playing style. There is no sneaking here because it is almost impossible to do it with such big monstrosities.
Add to that the big, thick, black smoke that comes out of the engine when the Trampler is on, and it’s clear how difficult it is to sneak up on someone. And with it, you can easily fight against enemies, whether it’s bots or other players. The game immediately explains to you what the weakest points of each trampler are and what you should aim for. But it’s not that simple because the angle at which you shoot plays a big role, as well as whether you’re moving or standing still.
When you start bursting fire on others, you can set your Trampler to stay on or simply turn it off. However, the latter can do you more harm than good as you are an easy target at that point. Although the game is practically set in the desert, this mechanic is irresistibly reminiscent of Sea of Thieves.
There isn’t a big risk of losing things, or at least I didn’t feel that compared to other games from the same genre. You have an option respawna, as long as you have provisions and a functioning bed with you. You can do this up to five times in one match respawnedwhich does little to lose the sense that everything is on the verge of collapse if you lose a life. But come on, sometimes it’s not bad to have a little more relaxed experience in extraction shooters.
Playing SAND made me realize that the game just wasn’t made primarily for solo players. Of course, you can play like that, but it’s a much better feeling when you’re in company. One controls the Trampler, two are on cannons, the third is ready to jump on someone else’s Trampler and finish off other players with melee weapons.
Also, just playing in one match can take a long time. For example, Arc: Raiders has a limited playing time, and even at the beginning you can immediately run back home. Here you have to wait a very long time for the departure time to be activated. The worst thing about it all is that it is very obvious that the game is in early accessu. First, the entire planet feels empty and rather boring, regardless of whether you’re playing at night or during the day. Another thing is that the game suffers from poor optimization, so you will often find yourself in a situation where you don’t want to framerate they will show no mercy and will slow down your progress. I haven’t had any problems with the server crashing (yet), I’ve started and completed all matches so far.
Combat against players, whether hand-to-hand or shooting with pistols, is very inconsistent. It often happened to me that a shot or a punch did not register at all, even though everything was clearly done. I even aimed and shot him with a shotgun a meter in front of the player, but nothing happened to him. During character deaths, it would sometimes happen that dead players would remain in strange T poses, standing or lying on their side.
SAND: Raiders of Sophine could become a good game if certain things are fixed and interesting things are added to this desolate planet. I have no doubt that the development studio will do it, but obviously it will take some time considering that the title is in a relatively early stage of development. Although using and driving the Trampler to the planet seems somewhat fun, it’s hard to recommend the game at the moment. Maybe this time next year we’ll be talking about a whole new experience. Who knows, maybe the development studio will surprise us and in six months we will have something that we can enjoy immensely. They were alive and saw it!