Info about Sandwalkers:

Official game description:
Every decade, the Mka tribe sends caravans of adventurers into the Phithi, the meteorological chaos that keeps the Uwando tribes isolated from each other and makes life outside the refuges almost impossible.
Their mission: to establish diplomatic and trade relations, to explore and reclaim the lands left to the mercy of monsters and pirates, and, most importantly, to plant a new tree city that can become a refuge for the Mka and their allies. Regardless of the success or failure of their mission, the caravans must send the memories they have gained back to the capital, using the crystospheres carried by traveling beetles.
*   Guide a caravan of adventurers through varied landscapes.
*   Fight hordes of pirates, wizards and monsters, and survive acid rain, storms and heat waves.
*   Rescue refugees, seek allies to support you and stir up the past in search of the causes of Phithi.
*   Keep _hope_: in this hostile desert, the caravaneers' faith in their mission is all that protects them from certain death.
*   Progress by passing on your knowledge to a new caravan.
*   Make choices that will affect your future expeditions.
*   Each character has different powers. It's up to you to explore lost ruins as an archaeologist or to track down massive creatures as a hunter.
*   Don't underestimate the weather! It conditions the movements of caravanners and the outcome of confrontations.
*   Repair the broken climate, and put an end to centuries of wandering.

Release date: Apr 8, 2025

Categories: Roguelike, Turn-based Combat, Resource Management, Exploration, Meta-Progression, Faction System


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price:
  - Community fair range: $10.00 - $15.00
  - Reasoning: Multiple reviews explicitly state the game is not worth its $19.99 full price, recommending buying on sale. One review suggests half-price ($10) is acceptable, while another calls it too expensive and does not recommend. A single early access note mentions the price is good even without discount, but the overwhelming sentiment is that the base price is too high and should be lower. Considering the typical sale price and community expectations, the fair range is between $10 and $15.
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: 15.0h
  - Story completion: 12.0h
  - Session length: 1.5h
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The first quote indicates total game completion around 15 hours. The second quote directly states story completion takes 12 hours. The third quote implies that technical issues force sessions to be 1-1.5 hours long, suggesting typical session length. The fourth quote shows that endgame content is minimal, with no specific hours reported; thus endgame is set to null due to insufficient evidence.
- Time-to-fun:
  - Summary: The game's early hours are a tedious slog due to opaque mechanics, unbalanced combat, and limited meta-progression, but it becomes more engaging after unlocking meta-progression upgrades, typically after a couple of hours or a few runs.
  - Stance: Clicks after
  - Anchor: After unlocking meta-progression upgrades
  - Time to anchor: 2h 0m
  - Friction: Early game unbalanced and tedious; Inventory management is tedious; RNG can negatively impact runs; Slow travel with frequent ambushes
  - Unlock drivers: Meta-progression upgrades; Understanding game mechanics; Accepting failure as part of the journey; Completing the first run
  - Conditions: Willingness to invest time in early grind; Acceptance of failure; Engagement with game's mechanics; Patience
- Player Archetypes:
  - Narrative Adventurer (buy)
    - Motivation: To experience a rich narrative and witness the world evolve through player actions
    - Playstyle: Focuses on exploration and dialogue, prioritizes story progression over efficiency
    - Experience: mixed
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: story lover; world explorer; narrative-first gamer
    - Reference games: Curious Expedition; Darkest Dungeon
  - Tactical Veteran (buy)
    - Motivation: To conquer tough tactical challenges and optimize party composition through runs
    - Playstyle: Cautious planning, meticulous resource management, and methodical combat execution
    - Experience: veteran
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: tactical gamer; hardcore roguelite fan; classic XCOM veteran
    - Reference games: Darkest Dungeon; XCOM: UFO Defense; Curious Expedition
  - Cautious Optimist (deep sale)
    - Motivation: To support promising development and enjoy the game as it evolves
    - Playstyle: Plays multiple early runs to test mechanics, tolerates roughness, and avoids excessive frustration by waiting for patches
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: deep sale
    - Labels: early adopter; patient gamer; developer supporter
    - Reference games: Legend of Keepers; other early access roguelites


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging gameplay and combat (weight 0.37): Players consistently praise the gameplay as enjoyable, solid, and fun. The turn-based combat system is highlighted as interesting, deep, and engaging, with emphasis on positioning, initiative, and synergy.
- Compelling story and lore (weight 0.34): The storytelling, narrative, and lore are frequently praised as captivating, amazing, and interesting. The world building is also highlighted as evocative and excellent.
- Beautiful and impressive visuals (weight 0.25): Players find the visuals aesthetically pleasing, impressive, and gorgeous. The graphics are described as fantastic, clear, and convenient.
- Fun and rewarding exploration (weight 0.21): Exploration is highlighted as fun, exciting, and addictive. The combination of exploration with combat and questing is particularly enjoyable, and map discovery influences gameplay positively.
- Interesting core mechanics and ideas (weight 0.2): The game's premise, mechanics, and ideas are considered interesting and unique. Players appreciate the variety of classes, abilities, and team compositions.
- Challenging but rewarding progression (weight 0.13): The game offers a challenging, sometimes brutal, progression that is rewarding. The roguelike/roguelite elements provide noticeable progression and a sense of accomplishment.
- Unique desert setting and world (weight 0.12): The desert setting is described as unique and well-crafted. Players find the world pretty, interesting, and enigmatic, with player actions causing the world to evolve.
- Great music and sound design (weight 0.1): The music and sound design receive positive mentions for being satisfying, great, and nice. Good sound design enhances the overall atmosphere.
- Good value for money (weight 0.08): Players feel they got their money's worth and consider the game a worthwhile purchase. The game's potential is also noted.
- Similar to Curious Expedition (weight 0.04): The early gameplay is compared favorably to Curious Expedition, suggesting fans of that series will enjoy this game.

Common complaints:
- Difficulty poorly balanced early (weight 0.18): The game's difficulty is very unbalanced, with an extremely hard start that becomes trivial after leveling. This poor early balance frustrates new players.
- Quest bugs block progress (weight 0.15): Multiple quests are broken due to bugs such as enemies not spawning, points of interest vanishing, and quests persisting across runs. One specific quest cannot progress after killing a worm, with no further guidance provided.
- Mid-late game becomes boring (weight 0.14): The game becomes slightly monotonous after mid-game, too easy and boring in the later stages. This leads to a lack of engagement as players progress.
- Memory leaks cause lag and crashes (weight 0.13): Severe memory leaks become worse with longer playtime, causing sluggish performance, lag, and crashes. Periodic restarts are required to mitigate the issue.
- Game unplayable from bugs (weight 0.11): The game is described as unplayable due to numerous bugs that significantly hamper the experience. This feedback is frequent and indicates severe quality issues.
- Game feels incomplete and not worth price (weight 0.11): The game feels incomplete and unfinished, not worth the $20 price in its current state. This feedback indicates a lack of value.
- Horrible UI and design choices (weight 0.1): The UI is horrible and several design choices make the game frustrating. These issues detract from the overall user experience.
- Not enough enemy variety (weight 0.1): Enemy variety struggles to keep pace with the player's growing mastery, and there are not enough different enemies. This leads to monotonous encounters.
- Supply management runs out fast (weight 0.08): Supply management is completely broken, with supplies running out too quickly. Players struggle to maintain necessary resources during runs.
- Meta-progression punishes players (weight 0.06): Early metaprogression punishes the player by removing basic functions and encourages incompetence, simplifying the game in an unfun way.
- Early game lacks caravan space (weight 0.06): Early game lacks enough space in the caravan, and the game becomes too easy when completing with only three caravans. This affects early progression and balance.
- Skill upgrades sometimes useless (weight 0.06): Skill upgrade choices sometimes have negligible or no increase, and the random skill level-up choices are frustrating for players seeking meaningful progression.
- Late game lacks depth and variety (weight 0.06): Battles lack variety in the late game, and the late game overall lacks depth. Players lose interest as the gameplay becomes shallow.
- Game imbalanced in player's favor (weight 0.06): The game is imbalanced, leaning too heavily in the player's favor. This makes the game feel too easy and lacking challenge.
- Combat feels unfinished (weight 0.06): Combat is described as unfinished and mediocre. The shallow mechanics and lack of polish leave players unsatisfied.
- Some bugs minor but present (weight 0.05): The game contains a few bugs, though none are game-breaking within 20 hours. However, the presence of bugs still affects the experience.
- Credits unskippable and too long (weight 0.05): Credits cannot be skipped and last over three minutes, which is an annoyance for players who want to continue playing or restart.

Gameplay feedback:
- Roguelike and meta-progression system (weight 0.34): Roguelike elements including procedural runs are combined with meta-progression that persists between runs, unlocking upgrades and narrative discoveries. This loop is central to replayability.
- Turn-based tactical combat (weight 0.25): The game features turn-based combat with positioning, role-based mechanics (tank/healer/damage dealer), and status effects. Players strategize using shield breaks and frontline/backline systems.
- Resource and inventory management (weight 0.21): Players must manage resources like food, weight, and supplies. Inventory management affects survival and caravan efficiency, with systems for scavenging and hunger.
- Caravan management and upgrades (weight 0.18): Caravan mechanics include supply management, weight limits, and upgrades that enhance provisions and damage. This system integrates with roguelike progression and resource strategy.
- Roguelite with caravan and resource focus (weight 0.12): The blend of roguelite progression, caravan management, and resource strategy (food, time, upgrades) defines the core gameplay loop, rewarding careful planning.
- Reputation and faction system (weight 0.12): A reputation system influences quest availability and barter prices based on faction standing. This adds a diplomatic layer to strategic decision-making.
- Desert exploration setting (weight 0.12): The game is set in a desert world where exploration focuses on hex grids, requiring navigation and discovery. The environment shapes resource challenges and encounters.
- Level-up skill randomization (weight 0.09): On leveling up, players select from a random list of skills, influenced by character traits. This adds variability to build strategies and team composition.
- Team composition experimentation (weight 0.06): Players experiment with different team compositions, leveraging role synergies and species-based abilities. This encourages replay through diverse strategic setups.
- Comparable to other strategy titles (weight 0.05): Players compare the game to titles like Curious Expedition, Legend of Keepers, and Vagrus, noting similar mechanics in roguelike strategy and management.

Performance notes:
- Long loading times worsen over time (weight 0.15): Loading screens become increasingly longer as the game progresses, indicating a cumulative performance degradation issue.
- Memory leaks cause crashes (weight 0.14): Multiple players report memory leaks that lead to freezing, stuttering, and eventual crashes, especially after extended play or when opening maps.
- Stuttering and low FPS (weight 0.13): Players report constant stuttering, sometimes dropping to 3-4 FPS on map screens, even with simple graphics and on low settings.
- Crashes loading map sections (weight 0.11): Players experience frequent crashes, especially when loading new map sections or during loading screens, with some reporting up to five crashes in two hours.
- Poor optimization on high-end hardware (weight 0.09): Performance is poor even on high-end PCs, including those with RTX 3080 GPUs, with stuttering and low FPS despite meeting recommended specs.
- Overheating and loud fans (weight 0.09): The game causes significant overheating, especially on the map screen, leading to loud fan noise due to high system resource usage.
- Sluggish map and inventory UI (weight 0.06): Opening the map and inventory is sluggish and unresponsive, contributing to a poor user experience.
- Steamdeck performance positive (weight 0.03): A single report indicates the game runs well on Steamdeck, suggesting optimization may vary by platform.
- Blurry display and resolution issues (weight 0.03): One player mentions blurry display and resolution problems, potentially linked to performance settings or bugs.

Recommendations:
- Worth buying on sale (weight 0.26): A large number of players recommend purchasing this game when it is discounted, suggesting it provides good value at a reduced price but may not be worth the full price.
- Not recommended currently (weight 0.19): Many reviewers advise against buying the game in its current state due to bugs, balance issues, and design problems, though some may change their recommendation if these issues are fixed.
- General positive recommendation (weight 0.16): Several players simply recommend the game without specific qualifiers, indicating overall satisfaction with the experience.
- Recommended for roguelike fans (weight 0.15): The game is particularly recommended for fans of roguelikes, turn-based RPGs, and specific similar titles like Curious Expedition, Legend of Keepers, and Darkest Dungeon.
- Too difficult for casual players (weight 0.14): The game is noted for its high difficulty and frequent deaths, appealing only to masochistic or hardcore players who enjoy overwhelming challenges.
- Bugs and technical issues (weight 0.13): Players frequently cite bugs, memory leaks, and game-breaking quest issues as reasons not to recommend the game currently, with some hoping for future fixes.
- Recommended with balance caveats (weight 0.12): Some players recommend the game but note that it needs rebalancing, particularly in early game, and suggest improvements are required for a better experience.
- Not for everyone (weight 0.12): The game is described as not suitable for all players, particularly those who dislike high difficulty, tedious exploration, or slow-paced gameplay.
- Not worth full price (weight 0.1): Several reviewers feel the game is not worth its full price (e.g., $20 or 2800 yen) due to limited content or quality, suggesting a sale is necessary for fair value.
- Wait for updates (weight 0.1): Several players suggest waiting for significant updates or bug fixes before purchasing, as the game currently has unresolved issues.
- Strong negative recommendation (weight 0.09): A few players strongly advise against buying the game, calling it the worst game ever or simply telling others to avoid it.
- Good for specific audiences (weight 0.08): The game is praised for its art, story, and atmosphere, and is recommended for casual survival fans, explorers, and those who enjoy a calm experience.
- Try before buying (weight 0.07): Some players suggest trying the demo or the game itself before purchasing to see if it fits personal taste.
- Not for fast-paced action fans (weight 0.05): The game is not recommended for players with ADHD or those expecting fast-paced action, as it may feel too slow or tedious.
- Good for travel and killing time (weight 0.05): The game is recommended for long journeys or casual evening play, especially if not compared to AAA titles.
- Improves after first run (weight 0.03): One reviewer notes that the game gets significantly better after the first playthrough due to meta progression, making it recommended after an initial run.
- Support the developers (weight 0.03): A few reviewers give a thumbs up specifically to support the developers, despite acknowledging the game's flaws.
- Worth 20 hours of gameplay (weight 0.02): One reviewer finds the game worth $20 if it provides 20 hours of entertainment, suggesting reasonable value for the price.
- Now recommended after fixes (weight 0.02): Following a bug fix, one reviewer now recommends the game, indicating that patches can improve the experience.
- High praise for challenge and beauty (weight 0.02): One reviewer rates the game 9/10, calling it challenging, beautiful, and deeply satisfying, representing a strongly positive outlier.

Other player notes:
No miscpoints

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.3): Players are frustrated by steep initial difficulty that forces multiple deaths to upgrade skills, combined with negligible player upgrades compared to overpowered enemies. The game is riddled with bugs—crashes, softlocks, quest blocks, and performance issues—that ruin progression. Repetitive combat, poor balance, confusing mechanics, and punitive meta-progression that removes basic functions instead of rewarding players further compound the experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.15): The game fails to live up to its promising premise, with a second half that drops in quality and a story truncated by poor translation. Mechanical depth fades after initial hours, leading to repetitive, unbalanced gameplay. Bugs, localization issues, and a half-finished feel—especially in early access—leave players feeling that potential is wasted.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.13): Despite the flaws, many players enjoy the roguelite turn-based combat, world-building, and atmospheric lore. The early game, art, music, and variety of classes provide engaging experiences. Exploration and the generational progression concept are frequently praised, with some players having fun for over two-thirds of their playtime.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.08): Satisfaction comes from overcoming the steep learning curve: after upgrading skills and selecting the right characters, the game becomes rewarding and manageable. Players appreciate the well-crafted world, music, pixel art, and the sense of progression from map exploration. Active developer support and the overall smart, pleasant entertainment value contribute to this feeling.
- Boredom (weight 0.05): Boredom sets in as combat becomes simplistic, repetitive, and unchallenging after the mid-game. Map events and quests feel repetitive and unimpactful, and the lack of enemy variety makes strategic choices irrelevant. The game becomes too easy, with a monotonous loop of movement, resource gathering, and trivial battles.
- Love (weight 0.03): Players love the unique combination of great story, characters, and combat, along with the evocative world-building and atmospheric desert theme. The focus on quests and stories in a roguelike format, combined with beautiful art and music, creates a deeply immersive experience.
- Hope (weight 0.03): Despite current shortcomings, players hope that developers will expand the universe with a sequel or significant updates. The core idea is seen as interesting, and active fixing and content additions suggest a path to a definitive, balanced experience in the future.
- Excitement (weight 0.03): Excitement is driven by deep content, challenging progression, and mechanics reminiscent of FTL that keep each run fresh. Players are eager to continue exploring, and the immersive world-building and varied decisions provide solid, compelling gameplay that some are willing to buy DLC for.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyances include the inability to review inventory before event outcomes, unskippable credits, and forced ambush encounters that make travel tedious. Numerous bugs such as texture glitches, missing items, and softlocks, along with disproportionate negative events without counterplay, also irk players.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Players are confused by the main story, which remains unclear even after completion, and a trading system that feels pointless. The start is poorly introduced, and the many factions make the story difficult to follow.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger stems from unbalanced level scaling and RNG that can make leveling harmful rather than helpful. Weight limits, forced limb removal mechanics, and useless skill designs with no synergy or balance are described as idiotic and borderline unplayable.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Players appreciate the beautiful pixel art, lore, and atmospheric direction. The artist's hard work is noted, and the game is valued for its aesthetic and lore-driven experience.
- Regret (weight 0.01): Regret comes from spending significant time (70 hours) on a game that failed to deliver, with players feeling they would have preferred reading books instead. The experience was not considered worth the time investment.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise is positive: the game exceeded expectations, particularly in how map discovery influences gameplay in an engaging way.
- Sadness (weight 0.01): Sadness arises from recognizing the game's potential that ultimately fails to deliver, and from the emotional impact of mechanics like watching party members starve to death after resources deplete.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration is directed at the deep, addictive combat system with tactical depth, and at the fresh ideas and well-crafted world that stand out in the saturated roguelike genre.
- Pleasure (weight 0.01): Pleasure comes from relaxing exploration paired with nice aesthetics, music, and visuals that create a calming and satisfying experience.
- Fun (weight 0.01): The overall roguelite experience is described as fun, providing an enjoyable experience despite some issues.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is fueled by excellent gameplay and progression systems that manage to be compelling even with bugs, along with the initial promise of the game.
- Joy (weight 0): Joy is brought by the music and art style, which combine to make the overall experience positive and uplifting.}