Sands of Hope

It's a good game. I didn't fall in love with it like I had hoped. The controls felt clunky and the gameplay was a little slow, but the art style is gorgeous! Really good looking game, but it just plays kinda okay.

The game has no autosave and doesn't tell you that. That or my autosave simply didn't happen. Either way, when I came back to play all of my progress was gone.

(The main story is) really short, should really have the short tag. I try not to read descriptions to be surprised. Maybe i was rushing too much. When the game ended i thought the real thing would just start somehow xD - some challenge mechanics like moving a ball out of a puzzle make you wait for the ball to despawn if you fail -> annoying (on controller only/ which is not recommended) - controlling the cubes can be a pain, height is somehow related to the way the camera is looking on the cube, which makes some puzzles really annoying - the dog is bugged (even useless anyways mostly) - races are kinda weird to start just let me talk once and go - its playable though I really enjoyed the building part at times and it felt kind of nostalgic. The clunky features have its charm, while the overall game feels quite polished, e.g. the small outfit selector being a walk-in, everything feeling really open world I am sure there would be more puzzles hidden. Overall it felt more like a polished tech demo than a full game, but the concept is quite relaxing/fun. I hope to get more

Good concept, meh execution and just, very little content overall I got this game on sale so I don't have any regrets but I will say that this game is cute and has a great concept gameplay wise. I would recommend purely due to this being an indie game with a cute robot however some criticism for the devs: The controls are a little finicky, the camera being locked into a pseudo-isometric view isn't utilized at all, it would be better to just give the player full control to prevent frustration, rather than purely a single button to rotate it by a fixed angle. The cube merging mechanic is kind of odd to get working in a way you want it to, if there were a better way to individually "pick a side" to merge to, that would've made a lot of puzzles much smoother. I can see a version/sequel of this game with a LOT of potential, fez style puzzles that play with the artstyle and require lots of planning and thinking in order to complete, its a shame this game is so small! I beat the whole thing in under 2 hours

A great puzzle game, short and sweet. I kinda wish there was more, but I look forward to seeing what else this team makes.

I really wish I could recommend this game, because it does have a lot going for it. The world design is interesting, I like the art style, and the sound effects/music are amazing. Unfortunately, the core mechanic of the game is so unbelievably frustrating to play. You manipulate these magnetic cubes that attach to one another to reach areas, build bridges, etc. However, the physics of the cubes seem to never do what you actually want to do. The puzzles themselves are quite simple, but actually getting the mechanics to do what you want without the physics completely messing you up and glitching out is a completely different story. If they make significant QOL updates to the controls here, I would absolutely return to this game. Unfortunately, the ~hour I spent in this game was frustrating due to the poor physics & controls, despite how interested I am in the world & story.