Sandwalkers

Just like many others pointed out, the game can be entertaining at first. But the first several hours don't justify how disappointing the rest of the game is. 1.Bugs? Bugs. I've never given too much attention to them in other games, and usually, if I like the game, they don't bother me much. In this game, most of the time you are not sure whether the game even works as intended. Quest bugs, combat bugs, visual glitches, etc. It's really bad. 2.Balance? There's none. It's not like there are some characters that are miles better than the rest. It's mostly certain skills, which narrow the amount of options to 1 (maybe 2, but rarely). Combat items are not balanced. There's 1 great one, others just clog your inventory. Caravan management is non-existent if you fail at least once and get to see the metaprogression system. Even with limited capacity and half the gameplay mechanics locked behind metaprogression, you can absolutely beat the game on the first try. It just requires a bit more patience. The game isn't challenging at all. 3.Motivation There's zero motivation to explore. During the first 1-1.5 hours, you will encounter all the events and map objects possible. There are only 2 (one of those is locked behind metaprogression) slots for equipment for each of the 4 members of your party. So you need to find 8 suitable items and you are set for the run. You don't need to chase item upgrades, as there's no reliable way to find better items; it's just random or bugged, the choice is yours. The items themselves are just stat-sticks. Each aspect of the game is very basic... The only reason I played as much as I played is cope. I believed until the credits that I'll see something new, something interesting or challenging. IT WAS NOT WORTH IT. Also, I couldn't skip the credits, which I still can't believe someone would do on purpose.

Nice game with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ balance. If you are willing to spend couple hours in unbalanced mess before you get some progress and upgrades, it can be good game, but the early game and overal balance is so bad, I cant recommend it. PROS + nice unique graphic + nice sound desigh + unique story + it runs well for me + ok gameplay + AFTER some progress, Metaprogression finally starts feeling as a good upgrades CONS - Early Metaprogression dosnt work, it dosnt reward you, it punishes you, Instead of unlocking stuff that you could select and use on future runs, It removes basic functions from you, like the use of basic items or consumable, and rewards them back to you after you have [strike] played [/strike] suffered enough. Furthermore you cannot freely choose what metaprogression upgrades you get, as they are locked behind main quest progression, instead of time spend in the game, so if you didnt progress the main quest further on your last run because RNG screwed you over (again), you get absolutely nothing. BUT after you get past those annoiances, it gets way better and usefull... the early game is horrendeous. - The absolute majority of events are net-negative, with every possible positive outcome being chance based or requiring sacrificing something in return, and the only garanteed positive outcomes requiring you to have specific characters in party (of which I would not consider most of those very good). - While the game still gets updated, the updates are mostly single line changes, with major bugs and balance issues from years ago still unfixed. - RNG and RNG alone determines the success of your run, RNG starting party, RNG starting character traits, RNG skill selection, RNG items avability, RNG events .... I dont feel like I am playing a game, I feel like something else is playing and I only watch wondering what catastrophy will happend next. - BALANCE feels like a joke. All characters start with 2 predetermined skills, most of those are worthless. So if you dont get good selection when startign new game, you may just as well restart immedietly. If you get into fight with higher level enemeis, it garantees losing 1 or more characters. Losing more than 1 character in battle prety much means restart too as there is no way to beat 4 enemies with just 2 (or even 3 injured) characters in next RNG ambush fight. If by amiracle you lose characters while being close enough to a city you may recruit someone but that will cost you items and experience harming you in the long run. Then there is RNG skill selection on level up, if nothing good shows up, you either have to spend time aquiring resources to trade for new replacement character, or you may as well just restart if you are not too far into the game. On top of that there are random traits that can make the whole character burden, if that happends you should replace that character, and go through the whole character RNG gauntlet again... oh and in a case you get good characters, you can get those burdening traits randomly from events, so dont get attached to your characters... like this whole game feels like a burden, instead of enjoying a gameplay, I have to deal with constant BS - Leveling actually hurts you, you get minimal gains, sometimes skill upgrades you get give you actually nothing worthwile, but enemy ambushes scale to your level, which means leveling up makes the game actively harder, not easier. This applies to metaprogression, where one "upgrade" increases your starting level... but at least you get the RNG character selection and RNG level up skill selection right at the start so you can restart the runs immedietly and dont have to invest time playing and get bad skills mid run... - Ending to a run donst come naturally, after certain time you will have to manually end a run as you will get stuck in difficulty, and accummulation of bad RNG. You have to END runs to get metaprogression upgrades to make the next part of the game playable ... and on repeat... this dosnt feel good at all... this game should have been Sandbox RPG with the upgrades avaliabe at all times, the "roguelite" nature of the metaprogression makes the game just worse

Sandwalkers is not for everyone. I cannot emphasize that enough. If your circulatory system is about 20% Mountain Dew and you take the inclusion of an "Easy" difficulty mode in a game as a personal insult Sandwalkers might be for you. If overwhelming difficulty and frequent deaths sounds like your idea of fun, then maybe the game has appeal for you. However, much of the early game difficulty is artificial: the mechanics are opaque and not super well-explained. The game certainly doesn't become trivial after getting over that hurdle (the survival mechanics are punishing unless you get supremely lucky) but it does create a strange and unnecessary difficulty hump. My impression is that this is intentional on the developer's part. Even if you're not hunting for a super punishing game, roguelikes often hold appeal for the exploration and opportunity for emergent story-telling. While the overall design philosophy, execution of the game map, and music are all beautiful exploration does not feel rewarding. The benefits are not encouraging enough for new players to take risks and events are repetitive. The characters' lifespan on each run is simply too short most of the time to get attached, which means deaths and party wipes don't feel exciting, they're just one bit of grit in the grind. Grinding can feel fun in many games but it just doesn't in Sandwalkers. You eventually hit a wall in the meta-progression and need a bit of luck to get passed it. In a good roguelike punishing RNG makes the game exciting or even funny, in Sandwalkers it just feels like wasted time.

I think you need a higher tolerance for repetitive tasks than I have to enjoy this game. First things first, this game is dripping with atmosphere. The intro had me hooked hard, I was excited for the story, it seemed like such a fascinating world to discover, filled with interesting people. And then it lost me with how long it took me to get from place to place to actually discover anything. What I saw of the combat was decent enough, but the actual bulk of the gameplay loop was plotting courses between different locations to make sure you don't run out of supplies and die of starvation in the wilderness. Now, I don't want to yuck anyone's yum if they like that kind of rout planning, and I recognize that the time I spent in game charting out these routs helped reflect the fact I was supposed to be on a gruelingly long quest, but personally I just found it tedious. There also seems to be a mechanic where leveling up the caravan is linked to dying (if I didn't have to die to level up then I never figured out how). Certain item classes were locked behind this form of level up. The gameplay didn't really *force* me to take on challenges beyond my abilities, and I think it's very possible to grind up your characters in relatively safe areas to reach into more difficult bioms (leveling characters is a different mechanic than leveling caravans). It was a tedious process... but the alternative was to deliberately charge into an area I knew my team couldn't handle, suiciding them because I was bored of their power level. This strategy would have caused a bit of narrative dissonance for me, and the narrative was the primary reason I was playing. I don't know if a better leveling system would have caused me to enjoy the game, but it certainly made it feel like more of a slog to me. Overall, the story looks great, I don't know I didn't really get that far into it, but the enjoyment I got didn't really seem to keep up with the number of hours I was putting into it.

Very repetitive, expected better.

Needs more content! Very good!!

I picked this game up as part of a bundle that included another title from my Wishlist, and when I first booted it up my immediate reaction was, “WOW, this game is tough.” After that first run, though, it clicked—it's a roguelike. You’re supposed to die. Hah! The whole loop is basically you running a caravan through a wasteland that hates you. You pick your crew, juggle supplies, and engage is combat with the baddies. When you die you launch fresh caravans after the inevitable wipe to push the story forward. The map is just hazard after hazard, resource nodes, random encounters—pure chaos. As you go, you earn points to unlock perks so your next squad has a slightly better chance of not immediately dying. If you’re into tactical turn‑based strategy, this is your jam. Don’t sweat it—embrace the RNG, enjoy the suffering, and experiment with builds until you find a strat that feels right. Half the fun is watching the universe dunk on you while you try to outsmart it. Don't stress! Embrace the Entropy!

Delivers way more than it costs and it's definitely a product of love not greed. If you like story heavy roguelikes that incentivize experimenting & story/gameplay progression over the runs, then just give it a try. I would wish for difficuty slider or hardcore mode as it's a little too easy for my taste.

Update: I finished the main story. The "major issue" I described below (mid-late game combat balance) is readily overcome by [spoiler]focusing your gear and followers on stacking resistances, especially physical.[/spoiler] Original review below. Great game! *** A lot of good ideas here, and worth trying out, especially if on sale. Don't expect perfection, and realize that you're probably going to get about 10 solid hours, at which point the only major issue (mid-late game combat balance) begins to impede the experience. Exploration (the backbone) is a fun reformulation of Curious Expedition, the story and lore are good, the art is nice, and the music satisfies. I've had a good time. When it hits its stride, the game achieves a nice balance between legitimate survival anxiety and a feeling of confident competence. I was never left without direction, yet also never felt like I didn't have more than one choice about what to do next. The UI could be better, and the game is a tad buggy, but I haven't encountered anything game breaking. A minor complaint is that, like so many other small projects, there are frustrating design decisions which are impactfully anti-player and yet seem like simple oversights. For example, sometimes all of the random event outcomes force me to lose reputation with a faction -- it isn't like I'm choosing between two sides, so why can't I just walk away, like I can in some other events? More frustrating still is not being able to review my caravan's inventory and personnel before selecting an outcome option in events. However, while annoying, these are ultimately tolerable things, as I never felt like one of these situations bricked a run. The only major issue is that combat balance falls apart quickly in the mid-late game, almost to the point of being game breaking. My first two runs were fine, my third run must've landed a busted party comp because it was very successful (until it wasn't lol), but now that my parties start at lvl 9, the up-scaled random mob packs right around the starting zone can slice them up much too easily, so my newest runs are very much struggling to take off. I suppose that I could painstakingly avoid fights & hope for good luck with the triggered ones until I build up some good gear, but besides being tedious that wouldn't completely solve the balance problem. I'll try a few more runs once I'm in a mood where I'd be okay with the time investment not paying off. I am definitely hoping for a sequel, which if done well could easily produce a definitive experience for the genre, given how much good stuff is already here in the first one.