SAND CRUISER

Please note: Sand Cruiser is in active development. All screenshots, videos and artwork show an early work-in-progress build and may change significantly before release.

A dying sun burned the world. The star swelled into a red giant, its heat made the surface unlivable, and what was left of humanity fled into the cool deep. Down there, in the rock, they woke something older: a predator that stirs at the signs of life. The swarm.

Now humanity is caught in a vise: the sun above, the swarm below. Stand still and you die. So people live on enormous land cruisers that chase the planet's drifting cool zones and never stay anywhere for long.

Build your cruiser

Build a rolling fortress out of whatever the world gives you. Drag out walls and floors however you like, then add modules, decks and roofs. A roof throws shade and keeps the deadly sun off your crew. But every machine that keeps you alive, from the generator to the galley, gives off heat and vibration, and that trail is exactly what leads the swarm to you at night.

Run a living crew

By day you're running a colony. Every crew member has their own skills, their own head, and a mood that can turn. You hand out shifts and priorities and keep people fed, rested and reasonably sane while they drill, repair and keep the galley going. Ignore one of them and you'll hear about it the moment they walk off the job in the middle of the night.

Survive the night

When the desert cools, the swarm rises. It's blind and hunts by signature alone. In daylight it trails your vibration, unseen under the sand; at night it breaks through wherever your warm cruiser burns in the dark like a beacon. So you post the guards and aim the searchlights, because light here isn't a comfort, it's firepower: what you don't light up, you can barely hit. Or you do the opposite and run cold, dark and quiet, and the night passes you over.

Read the land

The world is finite, and it gives up nothing willingly. You listen for what lies under the sand with seismic charges, triangulate the readings and drill them out. On the surface you scavenge scrap and pick through weathered ruins and the wrecks of other cruisers. None of it grows back. Whatever you strip is gone, and the shortage keeps pushing you on across the map.

Cruiser vs. cruiser vs. swarm

You share the desert with rival caravans. Most of the time everyone keeps their distance. But when two cruisers really do collide, it gets ugly: the combined heat and tremor of two ships trading fire drag the swarm up out of the ground in broad daylight, and it falls on both at once. A duel turns into a three-way, and hardly anyone drives away from that in one piece.

A world that doesn't want you

By day the desert burns, by night it freezes. Between the two lies a narrow band you can actually live in, and it drifts across the planet with the seasons. You chase it, week after week, always a little too slow. That's as far as the plan goes: make it to tomorrow.