Sandustry is one of those games where you look at the Steam page and suddenly sense your free time slipping through your fingertips like, well, grains of sand. A vast, unexplored 2D world packed with all manner of biomes teasing my Terraria tendencies. Pixel-based physics delivering smooth, satisfying flows of materials in similar fashion to Noita. A fully fledged automatization and industrialization system that lets you lay out planet-harvesting logistics and tear the entire map up for ancient treasures. “Oh no,” I whisper. This one’s going to be a problem.
Sandustry developer Lantto Games makes it clear that its sprawling worlds exist purely for you to exploit: “Every pixel is a resource waiting to be mined, mixed, processed, or destroyed.” Start out with classic favorites like sifting through sand in search of valuable gold, setting up conveyor belts and pipe networks to suck all the raw material up and filter out the good stuff. Don’t worry about navigation – your jetpack is stable and unlimited, and the world around you is fully destructible with the right tools. This is a sandbox game in the truest sense of the phrase.
As mentioned, every pixel in Sandustry is treated as its own physical entity, and much like Noita you can expect a whole heap of interactions between them. Heat ice to melt it into water, and then to evaporate it into steam, which will then head up to the skies and eventually return as rain. Sand will get everywhere, as it loves to do, but it can also suck up nearby water – this is helpful if you’re looking to sift through it for gold, but awkward when it starts draining your limited reservoirs. In true Terraria fashion, lava can pose a serious navigational problem, but careful redirection could turn it into a handy solution.
Your ultimate goal is gathering “powerful artifacts left by an ancient civilization,” but getting your hands on those won’t be as simple as just finding them, as most will require some careful thinking to overcome the environmental challenges keeping them secure. Lannto Games adds that Sandustry is “built with modding in mind,” opening the door to all manner of additional community customizations from visual tweaks and helpful UI tools to completely new buildings and industrial infrastructure.
Having been signed back in June 2025 by indie publisher Hooded Horse, Sandustry’s early access launch is now finally upon us, and it’s off to an impressive start. Early reviews (of which there are already over 1,200) are ‘overwhelmingly positive,’ with 97% of players recommending it. The low asking price makes Sandustry an even easier sell, especially given that a launch discount has brought it under that magical $10 mark.
Sandustry is out now in early access, with a 35% launch discount available until Thursday August 27. Expect to pay $9.74 / £8.44 while the sale lasts, or $14.99 / £12.99 after it ends. Grab it right here. The store page notes that the price might increase as early access progresses, so this could be the best deal for a while.
Lannto Games says it expects the early access to last for one year, but that this may change as plans develop based on player feedback. “We plan for the full version of Sandustry to have additional content influenced by community feedback,” it writes. “We will refine the procedural generation process to make it more granular, and we will add more buildings, resources, production chains, quests, biomes, and technologies for players to unlock as they proceed deeper into the planet.”
