Today is one of the most important days of the month for one simple reason: the Steam Next Fest starts this afternoon. From 7:00 PM (Spanish peninsular time), the demo festival of Valve’s platform, which brings together projects of all kinds with the aim of gaining recognition and a significant audience, begins and will last for a whole week. However, what is most interesting is that there is already a title that is sweeping, as, bypassing the Next Fest and releasing its demo a few hours before, the open world of Sand is the second most played demo on Steam in the last few hours.
For those who are not familiar with it, the video game SAND, developed by Hologryph and TowerHaus, is set in the remains of an Austro-Hungarian empire on a desert planet called Sophie. With this unique setting, SAND presents itself as a PvP open-world shooter where players not only explore a sandy wasteland in search of equipment but also build their own bases to survive another day. The peculiarity lies in the fact that these bases are gigantic walking steel robots, a concept that has attracted a lot of attention for its originality.
The current demo, which barely allows us to try a small part of the game, focuses on PvP battles, where players must face each other while navigating their mobile bases, the “Tramplers”, leaving exploration for future tests. The developers have promised that, in the future, more features will be added to the game, such as NPCs, new weapons, and additional mechanics for both PvP and PvE.
A success on Steam with a demo that is a hit
Despite being only a small sample of what the game will be in the future, SAND is sweeping. It is common to see games taking advantage of the Next Fest, but doing so with a pre-event demo, just a few hours in advance, is something remarkable. In this context, the independent studio has done the same with SAND, which has become the second most played demo of those released in the last 24 hours, surpassed only by Delta Force. However, if we review the complete list, and even though it was not on the last day, Strinova stands out as the winner of the total list.
Image from Steam
Despite the initial success of the demo, user opinions have been mixed. While many praise the game’s ambition and innovative approach, others have pointed out significant performance issues. Some players have reported difficulties in maintaining a stable match, affecting their gaming experience. However, the developers continue to work on improving these technical aspects, hoping that the final release will optimize performance for all users.
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