When gameplay decides. What is the appeal of "Galicians in Space", which earned $1 million despite mixed reviews. Review of SAND: Raiders of Sophie

The Manufacturing Miracle and the Publisher's Faith

Before analyzing the mechanics, it is worth understanding the context in which the game was created. As the head of the Hologryph studio Maksym Khrapai said in an interview with dev.ua, in 2023 the development team consisted of over 50 people . Two years later, in another interview with us, due to obvious objective reasons and difficulties, the staff was almost halved to 30 people . For a large-scale multiplayer PvPvE action game in an open world, this is critically, catastrophically small.

In such conditions, most publishers simply close the financing and write off the project as a loss. However, the publisher tinyBuild showed remarkable endurance. They gave the game time, did not kill it at the prototype stage, allowed the release to be postponed several times and brought it to a state where it began to sell. Thanks to this, we are able to play something that has already collected a good online following and brought the developers their first serious money.

Walking Fortresses

We approached the game with the lowest possible expectations. Previous playtests left a bitter aftertaste: stutters, 15 frames per second, and the general instability of the netcode made us think that the project simply would not live to see a full release. However, after launching the release build, we were forced to admit that the core gameplay works here. The game has the same exciting gameplay loop that makes you return to the wheel of your walking trampler again and again.

The heart of the game and the main feature of SAND are tramplers. Huge walking machines that serve as your transport, your base, and the main argument in disputes with other players.

The basic controls of this metal monster are intuitive. You quickly learn to turn, gain speed and maneuver. A special thrill is felt in the moments that resemble Sea of ​​Thieves - you climb onto the upper deck or the nearest dune with binoculars and peer into the horizon, looking for smoke from enemy vehicles. This romance of explorers and desert pirates is conveyed flawlessly.

But as soon as you deviate from a perfectly flat surface, problems begin. Physics and collisions (the interaction of objects) are still very raw. Trying to climb a mountain or cross a gorge often ends with the trampler's paws getting stuck in the textures. The machine simply freezes: one leg hangs in the air, the other has sunk into the ground, and you have to fiddle around for a long time to move.

SAND features a deep customization system for tramplers. The game offers a multi-level tech tree that allows you to build your own vehicles. These aren't just cosmetic changes — they're a full-fledged constructor. In theory, this is a brilliant game design move that should keep players hooked for years. But in practice, it's currently completely unbalancing.

Since the player can build decks and install cannons, you can meet real "Frankensteins" in the vastness of the desert. Imagine the situation: you go out in a basic trampler, and a monster rushes towards you, which has a total of eight cannons installed on three tiers, aimed directly at you. One volley - and you go to the lobby. At the moment, it seems that the game has no matchmaking at all by equipment level: weak crews are regularly thrown against pumped "cyber athletes", which turns survival into a lottery.

Dune meets Austria-Hungary

The visual style and lore of the game are one of its strongest aspects. The developers decided not to follow the beaten path and abandoned the classic post-apocalypse, aliens or space engineers. Instead, we got a unique mix: the desert planet Sofia, which resembles Arrakis from "Dune", but is inhabited by people from an alternative Austro-Hungarian Empire. This specific "Galician vibe" is felt in the design, architecture and general mood of the game.

However, the developers went a bit overboard with the naming. The names of locations and points of interest are so deeply steeped in Austro-Hungarian style that they are sometimes difficult to read, remember, or pronounce in voice chat during intense combat (hello, Fort Stufeninsel). For a game that is potentially aimed at streamers and YouTube guides, such difficult-to-pronounce names become an additional obstacle. Players need simple identifiers to quickly navigate the map.

As for the graphics, the situation is twofold. If you compare the real gameplay with the latest trailers, you can see an obvious downgrade. The picture has become less juicy, the visual effects have been simplified - this is probably a forced step to achieve at least some optimization and stable FPS. However, the game still knows how to generate incredibly beautiful landscapes. When the sun sets over the horizon, and you are sailing on your trampler through golden dunes, the picture looks simply fantastic.

Loot, exploration, and open world

The map in SAND is huge, but the distances between the main points of interest are too great, which often makes the world feel empty. To somehow fill these gaps, the developers have scattered small, unmarked locations on the map. But the problem is that the game does not encourage exploration in any way.

Loot at such small points is absolutely rubbish. Wasting time stopping the trampler and going down makes sense only in one case - if you are "at zero" and you have completely run out of resources for repairs or ammunition. In any other situation it is simply a waste of time.

But large locations are designed much more interestingly. The interaction between the trampler and the environment is very well implemented here. To get to the most valuable loot, it is often not enough for you to simply enter the room. You need to find explosives and blow up the armored door. Or, which is much more fun, drive your trampler to a convenient position and destroy the obstacle with a shot from the ship's cannon. This makes the role of the driver or gunner on the trampler important even when exploring the ruins - he does not have to be bored while the team is vacuuming the location.

The looting system itself is very similar to Sea of ​​Thieves: you find small items, put them in a portable crate, and then the whole team drags these crates to your ship. The variety of equipment is also pleasing: several types of weapons (pistols, single-shot rifles, shotguns), improvement systems (weapon rarity), and different types of ammunition (for example, buckshot for cannons to destroy enemies at close range).

Boarding or overboard?

SAND clearly divides combat encounters into two categories: battles with artificial intelligence (PvE) and clashes with real players (PvP). And these two aspects are made at radically different levels of quality.

The PvE component is what you'll see most often, but it's the worst. The mutant enemies guarding the locations are downright stupid. They don't have interesting behavior patterns, suffer from crooked animations, and, worst of all, are rigidly tied to their spawn points. You can literally stand in one place, kill an enemy, and a second later a new one will appear in the same place. This way you can shoot them in a row until their generation limit runs out.

But meetings with live players are a completely different story. There is no place for diplomacy here. If in games like ARC Raiders you can sometimes disperse peacefully, then in SAND any silhouette on the horizon is a sentence to battle. And this is logically due to the game itself: the stakes are too high. You spent time, collected a full trampler of loot, and no one wants to risk all this wealth. Therefore, the rule of the desert is simple - shoot first.

However, the technical state of the netcode often ruins these epic battles. During firefights, players can teleport, and sometimes the netcode gives such pearls that you can simply "fall" out of your own trampler at full speed, even though your character was standing still. Considering that the game severely punishes for mistakes, such bugs cause considerable frustration.

The team interaction UI deserves a special mention. The developers made a questionable design decision - if your teammate moves far away or hides behind an obstacle, his nickname disappears from the screen. If you play with random people without Discord, it's a disaster - you simply don't know where your teammates are. When someone falls overboard and doesn't say it into the microphone, you'll move on and not even notice the losses.

You should also be prepared for campers waiting for you at the evacuation points. The open spaces allow experienced snipers to lie on the heights near the signal tower and methodically shoot down the crews that arrive to save the loot.

Ukrainian shooter SAND attracted over 200,000 players in the first week after release

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Ukrainian shooter SAND attracted over 200,000 players in the first week after release

Post-match pain

The game offers two main modes. The first is an exploration mode without time limits, where you can explore the world more leisurely on a huge map. The second is a classic extraction with Battle Royale elements and a limited time, where the zone is constantly narrowing, forcing teams to collide with each other on the way to evacuation points.

And so you have successfully survived, fought off the campers, and dragged your battered trampler to the evacuation. It would seem that it is time to exhale and enjoy the loot. But here the game greets you with a loot distribution screen.

The concept itself is good - the captain, who has invested his resources in the trampler, distributes the treasures he has found among the crew members. You can refuse to take the loot and give it to the newcomers. It's a social element that could work.

But the implementation is just terrible. The interface is completely unintuitive. In most of our rinks, one of the players was simply not allowed to this screen due to bugs, and he could not participate in the distribution of loot. And the worst thing is the timer system. Even if all players have already made their choice, divided the loot and confirmed their readiness… you still have to wait for the 5-minute timer to end. For five minutes you sit and stare at the screen, unable to go to the lobby or start a new game.

In extraction shooters, where there must be time between matches to prepare for a new raid, this decision literally kills the desire to continue playing. Often, after one such "successful" evacuation, the team simply disperses, because no one wants to face this waiting screen again.

The roar of guns and a broken record

The sound in SAND is a roller coaster. On the one hand, the sounds of heavy weapons are done phenomenally. When you fire a ship's cannon, the sound is massive, voluminous, it realistically rolls through space. You literally physically feel the power of your shot. On the other hand, the sounds of regular handguns are faded, and the voice acting of mutant enemies is more annoying than scary.

The biggest problem with audio design is the work of the musical accompaniment. The tracks themselves are atmospheric, they emphasize combat clashes well and add dynamics to the game. But there are not many of them, and the system for activating them is frankly broken. There are situations when the game “thinks” that you are in battle, because some mob is stuck behind the wall of a barn a kilometer away from you. As a result, the driving battle music starts screaming at full volume and does not turn off for 10-20 minutes. Even the best track in the world after such a thing you want to turn it off in the settings forever.

Raw, but with potential

In summary, SAND by Hologryph is a game of phenomenal contrasts. On the one hand, it's a project that suffers from critical technical issues. There's crooked netcode, primitive AI, broken matchmaking balance, collision bugs, and a killer 5-minute post-match timer. If you're a gamer who's used to getting a perfectly polished product and isn't willing to waste your resources because your character teleported overboard, you should definitely wait.

On the other hand, the fact that a small Ukrainian team was able to release such an ambitious, complex and working project in the conditions of war deserves respect. The game has an interesting "core gameplay", which is the main source of fun. Controlling a self-assembled trampler, scanning the horizon in search of prey, demolishing doors with a ship's cannon and participating in intense PvP battles is really fun.

Sales charts confirm that the potential is huge. An estimated 300,000 copies sold and a million dollars earned are a big claim to success for a game in early access. The developers are actively releasing patches, balance adjustments, and bug fixes.

One can only hope that financial success will allow the studio to expand its staff, hire the necessary specialists, and bring SAND to the state it was shown in the early trailers. Because this desert is definitely worth exploring.

"Sand is about the fact that it is possible to make a game where there are no Russians at all." Interview with the creators of a shooter about Galicians in space

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"Sand is about the fact that it is possible to make a game where there are no Russians at all." Interview with the creators of a shooter about Galicians in space

Ukrainian shooter SAND attracted over 200,000 players in the first week after release

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Ukrainian shooter SAND attracted over 200,000 players in the first week after release

Galicians go into space. Ukrainian SAND: Raiders of Sophie is released in Steam Early Access

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Galicians go into space. Ukrainian SAND: Raiders of Sophie is released in Steam Early Access

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