''The Sandbox'' is a 2D

sandbox game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objec ...

for mobile phones (

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and Android) and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, developed by the game studio Pixowl and released on May 15, 2012. It was released for PC on Steam on June 19, 2015. A sequel, ''The Sandbox Evolution'', was later released on the same platforms. The brand was acquired by

Animoca Brands Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd. is a Hong Kong–based game software company and venture capital company co-founded in 2014 by Yat Siu and David Kim. The company initially focused on developing mobile games, then shifted to blockchain gaming a ...

in 2018, and its name was used for a

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

-based 3D open world game of the same name that launched on November 29, 2021.

Gameplay

The player takes the role of "Deity apprentice" and sets about crafting their own universe through the exploration of resources such as water, soil, lightning, lava, sand and glass. The user is given a single 2D screen as their canvas, and applies these resources as pixels. Once added to the screen, these resources interact in various ways, such as water mixing with sand to create mud, and lava burning other objects. The game also includes more complex elements such as humans, wildlife, and mechanical contraptions. The player is given challenges like making a battery or building an electrical circuit. Players can save worlds they have created and also upload them to a public gallery. The game is free to play, with

microtransactions Microtransaction (mtx) refers to a business model where users can purchase in-game virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransactions ...

required to unlock additional building elements.

Reception

The 2015 edition of the game has a

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

score of 85% based on 7 critic reviews.

References

External links

The Sandbox

The Sandbox Evolution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sandbox, The 2012 video games Android (operating system) games Sandbox games IOS games Video games developed in the United States