*A code for SAND: Raiders of Sophie was provided for this preview. The title is currently in Early Access and subject to change.
Extraction shooters have been one of the hardest genres for me to get into. Multiplayer games, in general, beyond fighting games at least, require an amount of commitment that I have never been able to invest. SAND: Raiders of Sophie looked interesting enough in its showcase during Summer Games Fest that I was hoping it might break that spell. After spending a few days with it, I remain unsure. There is a cool idea in there, lumbering around like the trampler mechs the players pilot. Moreover, just like those mechs, there is a long road to navigate to get somewhere in which the experience can be fully enjoyed.
Like most extraction games, SAND has the player start off in a base, then drop off into the world of Sophie, which appears to be a mostly desert planet, but maybe that’s just the part we have access to now. The big twist in the formula here is that players get a giant four-legged mech, the aforementioned Trampler, to explore the world. In terms of gameplay, think of this as a blend of Arc Raiders and Sea of Thieves. I enjoy Sea of Thieves, and the mix-up certainly has its potential. Not to mention the blend of Weird West and Steampunk on top (I had a big steampunk phase in my 20s).
What this function actually does for gameplay, and it’s actually something with ramifications, is that the trampler, not the player, actually acts as the important element of survival. If the player dies, they lose everything they dropped, as expected from an extraction shooter, but you do not fail the mission. The Trampler will typically have a location to respawn, so death is not actually the end. The thing about this is that it takes about a minute to respawn, so your trampler is ripe for devastation. If it is destroyed, that is how your expedition can go wrong. When you lose that way, you lose that Trampler, which can be an extremely punishing outcome given how much material these can cost.
This hurts equally as much, given that building your Trampler is 90% of SAND. One of the many aims of each run is to find material you can use to upgrade your mech to have different layouts and looks. Each compartment is treated independently as it gets shot up. It adds some cool effects as you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, panicking as you get blasted up, entering a room that used to have some gear you stashed, only to find it is just a hole in the wall. Since the mech has the same perma loss on materials and weapons, it is doubly impactful when you meet a bad end. The game unfortunately doesn’t have a basic kit feature like others I have played, at least for the Trampler, so it is completely possible to softlock yourself when you run out of mechs.
Matches also have a slightly different format than I was familiar with; moreover, they can take 10-15 minutes before an exit even opens up for the player to leave. Typically, you have a way out, even from entry on the map (at least in my experience), which creates the risk and reward of exploring more to make your time worthwhile, but with the increasing chance of getting murdered in the process. In SAND, you are stuck there for a length of time, forcing the risk on you that you have a ton of stuff; what’s the chance somebody takes it from you?
The weird thing about this is that the matches either had nobody in them or everybody. In the first few games, I didn’t encounter a single enemy player, which was fine. I would later learn that in the range of player types you could encounter in this PvPvE, you will typically find people who want you dead. Players don’t HAVE to fight each other, but I get the appeal, as much as I would love to avoid that. I didn’t even realize there were AI enemies in the game until a few matches, with areas I hit up having mostly just items.
Each area has empty boxes, and, unfortunately, while the game bombards you with a lot of text tutorials early on, it does very little to actually explain the ins and outs. For instance, those empty boxes are meant to be loaded up with gear found in the area for easy transportation and storage on your Trampler. Because of this, you are probably going to want to grab everything you can as fast as you can, then jump back on your mech because if somebody is going to roll up on you, there is a high probability they will shoot the Trampler before they even see you.
This is when I learned the truest limitation you might face in SAND. You REALLY can’t play solo. That’s the biggest issue. Playing by yourself, you HAVE to leave your vehicle unattended to explore the multiple locations on the large map, which will lead to you having a bad time. Even if you are piloting it, defending the Trampler then involves jumping between loading the cannon, firing the cannon, shooting at the enemies, and then avoiding rocks as you move.
I did play with a second for a few rounds, and this helps a little, but the game still heavily implies you need more. The bigger issue with this is a simple solution; it would fix the soft lock issue, too. You can invite up to six friends, but that has always been my issue. I have no friends. More so, I have friends who begged me to buy Friday the 13th, only for them to play it for a week and stop. Do you think they will even download a free-to-play game to play with me? Hell no. I could never convince them to play a paid game with me. You can invite friends, but no autofill? I could forgive almost everything in SAND; it is early access after all, but this should have been a feature from launch.
An issue I can kind of forgive, if you require examples, is how empty the world feels, which can make it drag out. As I put it earlier, think Arc Raiders meets Sea of Thieves. Part of this, though, is that the Trampler lumbers slowly through the desert as you pass… Nothing… Heading for the next blip on the map. There are tiny spots you might stop at along the way, though they can range from having a good thing or two to almost nothing. For the most part, you are riding with nothing, making the matches where you don’t start getting shot at even worse.
Tramplers are pretty cool to pilot, on the plus side. You jump behind the wheel and turn it, which adjusts the angle, but you don’t need to just stand there. It will move on its own, no matter how you set it, letting you check the things or scope the area as you move. The big telltale of a trampler is the smokestack that bellows above the dunes, so that is what you are likely to see before you even notice the giant machine itself. It’s a cool and immersive touch that I genuinely appreciated.
Finding weapons is fairly easy, referring to guns and things of that nature. This is great because losing them and all your ammo is just as easy. Actually, probably easier. You can use your fists, but to say that fisticuffs were severely lacking would be an understatement, as it feels like enemies run right through them. Gunplay was also slightly unsatisfying, with the aim feeling cumbersome. This is coming from somebody who won most of my gunfights, too.
The worst part is losing, though, definitely, as shootouts can devolve into quick respawning on mechs two inches apart, racing to grab a gun off a corpse, and trying to fight off the other respawning players. Too often it comes down to which team has a player on their Trampler that can just shoot the other while you all shoot each other. That was never me. Thankfully, the AI is at least partially braindead, consisting of running straight at you or strafing with a gun, but again, shooting these enemies can be annoying, as down sights seem to never reflect where the gun will actually hit. That said, I mostly found common rusty guns; maybe that’s my loadout problem, but it makes the experience less fun when trying to progress.
SAND: Raiders of Sophie has a lot of interesting mechanics in a slightly underwhelming package. While I’m not sure if this is the intent, right now, this is possibly one of the most punishing extraction shooters that I have played. There are so many ways the experience can just devolve into frustration, especially if you have limited people to play with. There are obvious issues even from a gameplay perspective, but as with all early access games, the hope is that they know about these issues and plan to fix them or might address them once they know. This has the potential to be a very cool take on the formula, but by Ifrit, it desperately needs an autofill.
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