Sandustry Review: A Factory Simulation Game that Gets it Right
Sandustry is a factory simulation game that casts you as an alien prospector sent to a planet full of buried ruins, with the objective of turning all the sand into gold. Developed by Lantto Games and Hooded Horse, this game is a departure from the usual factory genre, where you're more of a glorified cursor, able to glide through your own buildings together with any materials you've excavated.
The game's unique physics engine gives great heap to the concept of industrial waste, making it the only factory game that really makes me think of post-industrial landscapes. The 2D artstyle may seem dinky, but it effectively communicates the physicality of industrial waste, with a pile of superfluous crap forming peaks and valleys and undulating plateaus.
In Sandustry, byproducts are not just a nuisance, but an exquisite, granular entity that forms seams of different materials and tells a story. You soon learn to understand how the heap was made at a glance, the forces that acted upon it, and the mechanisms each grain moved through. This is useful, because your factories will likely be imperfect, with gaps and bottlenecks and badly planned intersections that knock the pixels out of flow.
The game's presentation may be utilitarian, but it's bizarrely captivating scenery, as bleak as it feels to be strip-mining a planet full of tapering, ancient structures. The loosened matter that pools across the surface has a kind of splendour, and it's tempting to finesse every pile of refuse with your auto-filtering Grabber.
The game's tech tree unlocks new uses for sand residue, such as burning and compressing it to produce seed alongside additional gold. This accompanies a further revisiting of your heaps, and suddenly all that garbage you piled up near your initial gold-panning operation has value. Expansion becomes a process of tracking and tending to dispersed and unruly hummocks of stuff that remain pleasantly fiddly to manipulate.
It's satisfying, and kind of horrifying. Sandustry wants everything to become gold not because gold is desirable, but because gold is one of the few factory products that vanishes completely once you make use of it, converting to unlocks and upgrades without leaving any terrible mountains of spoil behind.
A Game that Gets it Right
Sandustry is a game that gets it right in many ways. It's a unique take on the factory simulation genre, with a focus on the physicality of industrial waste and the concept of byproducts. The game's presentation may be utilitarian, but it's bizarrely captivating scenery, and the game's mechanics are satisfying and kind of horrifying.
A Game Worth Playing
Sandustry is a game worth playing, especially for fans of factory simulation games. It's a unique take on the genre, with a focus on the physicality of industrial waste and the concept of byproducts. The game's presentation may be utilitarian, but it's bizarrely captivating scenery, and the game's mechanics are satisfying and kind of horrifying.
The game is currently available in early access, and it's a great opportunity to try out a new and unique take on the factory simulation genre. With its focus on the physicality of industrial waste and the concept of byproducts, Sandustry is a game that gets it right in many ways.
