Sandtide is a single-player old-school-like 2D isometric real-time strategy and management game with a extraction and roguelite twist. Players expand their territory while fending off relentless attacks from colossal monsters. These monsters are drawn to sound, and everything the player creates or manages emits noise that can attract them. As time progresses and the player’s noise levels rise, ramping up the danger.
Details
| Status | In Development |
| Genres | Real Time Strategy; Management; Extraction; Roguelite. |
| Release Date | TBA |
| Platform | Windows / Linux |
Description
In the distant future, a new galaxy has been discovered, filled with floating islands containing Enud, the most valuable ore in the known universe. Commanders from various factions of the Universal Order have been chosen to explore these newly discovered lands. Choose between unique playable factions, explore randomly generated isometric islands, build structures, recruit units, produce resources, research new technologies, and strive to survive.
Game Pillars
- Environment-Driven;
- Replayability;
- Micromanagement;
- Survivability (hard decision / fast thinking);
- Meta Progression.
Game Modes
The game unfolds across multiple matches, each of which can be either timed, called Excursions or timeless, called Campaigns. To survive a match, you must complete random tasks, harvest and extract Enud, and then evacuate.
Each match will deterministically and procedurally generate an archipelago of floating islands with diverse biomes based on the provided seed, as shown in the zoomed-out pre-alpha GIF displaying different generated islands.
Matches can end in one of three ways: the player’s complete annihilation, forced evacuation due to timeout, or successful completion of all objectives, including evacuation.
After each match, players earn match points based on their performance, including faction experience. Points are calculated from various in-game factors like Enud collected, buildings created, units recruited, gadgets used, and more. Factions also have a leveling system, enhancing replayability by unlocking exclusive resources as players’ factions level up, encouraging new strategies and further progression.
Factions
Each faction has unique strengths and weaknesses in core gameplay areas like harvesting & building, load & unload & trading, transmutation & engineering, and enlist & depart & engage & exploit. Four factions are currently in development, each distinct both mechanically and in terms of lore:
- Fornacis - Ore’s Architects;
- Sculptors - Enlightened Artisans;
- Vhelés - Urania’s Alchemist;
- Volans - Sky’s Sellswords.
Technicalities
Sandtide is built on top of MonoGame and an in-house, free and open-source ECS framework called Theia ECS. Due to the level of flexibility and control we wanted over our source code, we chose not to use a game engine and instead followed a more old-school development approach.
Since this is written by a programmer, I strongly believe that combining different programming paradigms like object-oriented, functional, and procedural, along with design approaches such as data-oriented design, is the best way to build a solid, maintainable, scalable, and high-performance codebase.
Details about specific implementations will likely be shared in the future, either from a more technical, programming-focused perspective or simply to showcase our progress and Sandtide features.
Message from Developer
Sandtide is a passion project heavily inspired by notorious science fiction and high fantasy, blending those influences with a love for old-school games. We strive to bring something new to the table and, along with it, deliver both joy and challenge to our players.