All posts tagged in Sandbox
Dec 20, 2023
We’re another week closer to Christmas and I can’t wait! I love going around the neighborhood looking at people’s decorations. I think that’s part of why ACNH having lights in trees feels so satisfying to me. What else is super exciting about the Christmas season, is the new gaming systems and games you get! And with Steam Decks being fairly popular, what better way to celebrate the approach of the holiday with some gift ideas for that system?
The following list only features games that have been Steam Deck verified, to save the gamer in your life some troubles and heartache!
My Time at Sandrock
My Time at Sandrock is the long awaited sequel to My Time at Portia. And just like the prequel, this one takes place in a post-apocalyptic world 330 years after the Day of Calamity destroyed a lot of modern technology. You accept the role as a builder of Sandrock, a desert community. Gather resources to build machines, befriend locals, fight enemies, and lead the town to economic prosperity! Uncover the backstories for over 30 NPCs while you forge friendships with them. Complete side quests, play fun minigames, and even team up with a friend to play the game together!
APICO
APICO is a lovely game where you leave your boring city job and return to Port APICO, where you grew up, and return to your beekeeping roots. The APICO islands feature a set of lush, beautiful environments for you to explore. Each biome has its own breed of bees for you to discover. Gather resources to use in your studies or crafting. Make and sell Apicola (honey) and other beekeeping items you will discover. Play fun beekeeping minigames, without the stings! More importantly, breed different cross breeds of bees and discover 30 new species to help repopulate the APICO islands with. Plus, uncover the secrets of the islands while you explore.
I even have a review of APICO here, if you want more information!
Cornucopia
Cornucopia offers the same comfortable features players have grown to love from the farming game genre, but in a lovely 2.5D pixel art style. You plant 52 types of fruit trees, 15 types of berry bushes, and grow 52 different crops, including their different artisan varieties. Sell crops or cook them up in one of 200 different recipes! There’s also logging, fishing, mining, and pet breeding to occupy your days. Also enter the pets into competitive races or use them to help you fight monsters. Then, kick back and relax with some crafting and decorating. Unlock furniture and decorations to turn your farm into your favorite getaway. Make friends with Cornucopia’s NPCs, too. Who knows, maybe one of the over 47 NPCs will catch your fancy! Romance them, go on dates, and unlock their romantic cut scenes. Even marry one, start a family, and decorate their room in your house.
While the Iron’s Hot
Play as a simple journeyman blacksmith in While the Iron’s Hot. You’re looking to become a master blacksmith. This game features an exciting combat-free experience. Journey to the mystical lands of Ellian where you’ll meet a cast of quirky characters. Explore tunnels full of puzzles and resources. Master every step of the blacksmithing process. Smelt ore, turn metal into ingots, and shape them into useful items. Use your skills to repair machinery to open up new areas to explore. Craft equipment that helps you explore new regions. Even work hard to restore the defunct blacksmithing town of Stal. Revitalizing the village just might prove to Eillian’s artisans that you’re worthy of being a master blacksmith!
Loddlenaut
In Loddlenaut, you play as an interstellar custodian who has been hired by the spacefaring mega corporation GUPPI to clean up their mess. They’ve inundated GUP-14 with pollution, and want you to restore the planet. This is an open-world ocean adventure where you’ll get to explore this beautiful alien planet, along with the corporate ruins of GUPPI. You’ll find remnants of their buildings, ships, and machinery that have all sunken to the bottom of the game’s ocean. Use your bubble gun, clean up the trash, remove oil spills, and uncover clues about the past inhabitants. Unlock better gadgets to help you clean up different types of ocean pollution. Recycle the trash you collect and use it to craft items. Even befriend cute little axolotl-looking creatures called loddles!
Did you get a new Switch instead? Or perhaps you got one for someone and want some games to go with it. Either way, check out my list of 5 Farming Games for Your New Switch!
- Dec 20, 2023
Make Room is an adorable little sandbox simulation game where you create small dioramas. Choose from over a hundred different objects to craft the perfect reading nook, cozy kitchen, or comfy bedroom. Freely place each item exactly where you’d like it to go. Choose from a number of different colors to make the perfect aesthetic. Even pick what the outside of the room will look like, resize objects like trees, and more!
Release Date
This lovely little room maker, Make Room will release sometime next year and can be found on Steam!
Paralives boasts better room-building than The Sims if that was your favorite part of that game. Or there’s Tiny Glade, that’s just building cute little buildings and such!
- Dec 14, 2023
Have you been wanting to care for a host of houseplants, but don’t have the green thumb or the space necessary? Then Taking Root could be perfect for you!
Taking Root is a cozy and casual game all about taking care of houseplants. You’ll take time to water them, and prune the plants as necessary. Ensure their growth by preparing the perfect environment for them. This game takes “realistic” seriously, too, as the plants all grow in real time. Then, you can even propagate offshoots and cuttings of your plants to create a flourishing at-home garden! Sell your cuttings to earn some money that you can use to decorate your space, too. There are over 100 pieces of furniture and decor items for you to choose from. Plus, furniture is customizable.
Taking Root is sure to be a comfy and cozy gardening experience!
Release Date
You can find this lovely game on Steam, where you can add it to your Wishlist. However, there is no release date listed. It’s just expected to release sometime next year.
Want more gardening? Try Garden Galaxy and Botany Manor!
- Nov 23, 2023
Are you looking for a cozy idle game that doesn’t involve leveling up fighters to defeat bosses and enemies? Garden Galaxy might be perfect for you, then! This relaxing little game is a unique sandbox idler where you take time to craft your ideal landscape.
You start with a blank canvas of a few white tiles, and a mysterious looking pot. Every few seconds in Garden Galaxy you’ll have a cute little flame-like visitor pop-up for a visit. Click them to earn a coin. Then, feed the coin into the mysterious pot to earn a reward! The pot will spit out cute decorations like lanterns and planters, helpful piggy banks, and terrain tiles. Rearrange the terrain tiles and decorations as you please to create a beautiful garden space. You’ll even be able to change the background color and the time of day to achieve the perfect aesthetic.
Take a moment to embark on a chill and creative journey with this pretty little idle game!
Available Now
You can find Garden Galaxy on Steam now! There’s also a demo available so you can try out the game first.
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is another cozy idle game worth taking a look at!
- Nov 23, 2023
What’s better than running a bath house for spirits? Maybe running an adorable mountain-side spa for cute critters! Capybara Spa is an adorable point and click simulation game where you do just that. Restore a run-down spa and run an efficient business to please your customers.
In Capybara Spa, you’ll grow different fruits like lemons, oranges, strawberries, and blueberries to feed as snacks to your guests. You’ll also need to craft different soaps that your guests request to keep them happy. Work on increasing the popularity of your spa to unlock new decorations and amenities like tubs and fruit gardens. Even expand your business to accommodate more animals. You’ll encounter turtles, frogs, otters, and ducks as your business grows. Plus, you can employ butterflies, bees, dragonflies, and ladybugs to help run the spa more efficiently!
Can you run a successful and relaxing spa?
Available Now
You can find the adorable Capybara Spa on Steam now!
- Nov 16, 2023
Fantastic Haven is a lovely Zoo Tycoon type game where you run a safe haven for magical creatures. As people move towards more advanced technology, their desire to live in harmony with the magical creatures wanes. This puts the balance of magic under pressure, and it’s up to you to restore that balance. Take in magical creatures that are injured or endangered, and restore them to health. Then, release them back into the wild to help restore the magic of the world. Even try diplomacy and education to teach humans about the importance of these creatures. It’s not an easy job, but it’s worth it!
The Demo
I had the pleasure of playing the demo for Fantastic Haven and I have to say, it was SO short. I got a very small taste of what the game is about, and it left me wanting more. Building facilities necessary for taking care of animals, as well as advancing your research is great for game progression. Hand-crafting the biotopes needed to house the magical creatures is fun and lends a sense of creativity outside of building what amounts to a village with your buildings.
It’s apparent that, despite the short demo, Fantastic Haven will be fully involved and perfect for spending a day gaming. You conduct research, build golems to help you in your tasks, care for the creatures’ medical needs, build biotopes, feed creatures, and much more. It has a very apparent depth to it. However, that means there are menus upon menus for you to navigate. That by itself is fine.
Many complicated strategy and management games have that. Fantastic Haven’s research menu, building menus, creature menus, etc. are common enough. The only problem I found is that the text is TINY. It’s difficult to read, which makes it difficult to accomplish things in the game. The lack of tutorial was mildly frustrating, too. I don’t know if that was demo specific, but I hope so. The starting quests ask you to pan the camera, move around the area, and similar. It doesn’t tell you how to do that, though. So, if you’d never encountered using Q and E to turn a camera, you’d be totally lost and unable to progress the quest line.
Final Thoughts
That said, Fantastic Haven is absolutely beautiful and offers an immersive storyline along with its game play. I could see myself spending hours upon hours perfecting the layout of my village, negotiating with humans, and carefully building biotopes for creatures. It’s a magical adventure that calls me to play!
I’ll hold off on rating the demo, since they’re not always accurate to what the final game will look like. Just know that I think it’ll be a worthwhile game!
You can find Fantastic Haven on Steam, where you can Wishlist it. It’s not projected to release until Q2 of next year, though. There’s also plans for releases on Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox!
- Nov 16, 2023
Have you ever watched a post-apocalyptic movie or show and felt a spark of joy at nature slowly reclaiming vast cities? Well, Cloud Gardens might be perfect for you! It’s a chill game where you grow the plants that take over decaying urban dioramas. It’s a charming mix of sandbox toy, gardening sim, dystopian landscape builder, and puzzle game.
Cloud Gardens lets you engage in the freedom of sandbox mode with its lack of goals, or take on the multi-chapter campaign mode to complete tasks. Strike a balance between nature and manufactured by placing different items in the scene. The objects encourage plant growth, but each object needs to be covered in plant life before you can continue.
Once you’ve created beautiful landscapes, you can then download looping videos of them to commemorate your work and share it!
Available Now
You can find Cloud Gardens on Steam now!
Gourdlets lets you build adorable little cityscapes!
- Oct 18, 2023
We currently have Palia, the cozy MMO with zero combat and a focus on some pretty neat world lore. This was released in open beta in August of this year. Then there’s Loftia, a cute solarpunk cozy MMO whose early access isn’t coming until 2025! Now, there’s another possible cozy MMO to keep an eye on.
WorldShards is a sandbox MMORPG set in a fantasy world. What was once a prosperous world inhabited by cat creatures called meowkle, a terrible catastrophe shattered the land. Then, evil wargs attacked. Now the world is made up of numerous flying islands, and you’ll have to explore these fragments, fight the wargs, and restore the meowkles to their former glory!
You’ll receive the use of your very own flying island to turn into your home base. There, you’ll be able to build a house to suit all of your WorldShards needs. Process resources you gather, access crafting stations to make equipment and weapons, and more. Even recruit a friendly meowkle friend to help you out around the house or in your adventures.
Otherwise, take time to explore a beautiful fantasy world full of stunning vistas. Discover the mysteries and secrets WorldShards has hidden in its islands. Set up a useful teleportation system to generate islands that will be useful to you and your play style. Even solve puzzles and complete quests. Gather various resources during your adventures that can be used in crafting or trading. Also go toe to toe with the evil wargs and their ruthless king to help save the world. Engage in stealth missions or defeat them in dynamic battles that depend on your play style.
Coming Soon
WorldShards is currently being developed, but you can find the roadmap on their website. Early Access is intended for Q3 of this year, with a full release slated for Q3 of 2024! You can find it on Steam and Epic Games to add it to your Wishlist now!
