Following extensive October playtests, the developers behind Sand have announced a major shift in strategy: the diesel-punk survival game will bypass Early Access entirely, aiming directly for a 1.0 release. Alongside this pivot, the team detailed critical fixes to server stability, weapon ballistics, and the Trampler building meta.
The End of the "Tower" Meta
If you participated in the October playtests, you likely saw—or piloted—a "Tower." These were Tramplers built vertically to gain a height advantage without suffering enough penalties. In the harsh deserts of Sophie, physics should be your enemy as much as your rival scavengers. The developers agree.
The upcoming balance pass is directly targeting these builds. Expect a reworked stability system where building high significantly impacts your vehicle's speed and handling. You can still build a moving fortress, but it won't handle like a dune buggy anymore. This trade-off forces players to choose between the tactical advantage of height and the necessity of mobility.
Netcode and Ballistics Overhaul
Shooting at a moving target from another moving target is the core of Sand's combat loop, but latency made this frustrating in previous builds. To fix this, the team is implementing a rollback system for ballistics.
For the uninitiated, rollback networking predicts where a player (or vehicle) is during lag spikes and "rolls back" the simulation to confirm hits that looked correct on your screen. This is standard in fighting games but crucial here for high-speed vehicular combat. If you line up a cannon shot on a fleeing Trampler, the server should now properly register that hit, even if ping fluctuates.
How are crew sizes changing?
Matchmaking is getting a structural overhaul to accommodate different party sizes. The new system officially categorizes crews into three tiers:
- Solo: 1 Player
- Small Crew: 2-3 Players
- Large Crew: 4-6 Players
This segmentation suggests the matchmaking logic will try to prevent solo scavengers from being immediately steamrolled by a six-stack galleon, though the exact matchmaking rules are still being tuned. A new UI update will support these brackets, making lobby management clearer.
Progression and New Player Onboarding
Survival games are notoriously difficult to learn, and Sand's unique vehicle mechanics add another layer of complexity. A basic tutorial is finally being implemented to teach the fundamentals of Trampler operation before dumping you into the wasteland. Additionally, progression speed is being tweaked. The devs felt the journey from impoverished settler to master of the wastes was pacing incorrectly, so expect the grind for new tech and resources to feel different in the next test.
With the decision to target a 1.0 launch, Hologryph and TowerHaus are signaling that the content is largely feature-complete. The focus now shifts entirely to polish, stability, and ensuring the economy of Sophie feels fair but unforgiving.