Chains on Sand
Tabula Forge · 2025 · Turn-Based, Turn-Based Tactics, Turn-Based Combat, Grid-Based Movement, Roguelike
PC
7 user reviews57% · 7
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About Chains on Sand
Chains on Sand is a brutal, tactical roguelike where you take the role of a gladiator condemned to fight for survival. Start as a nobody, build your legend in the arena, and climb your way toward freedom—or die trying. Every victory earns you loot, gold, and experience—but death is permanent, and the crowd is always watching.Core Gameplay• Tactical Combat: Engage in turn-based grid combat with hit locations, active defenses (dodge, parry, block), flanking, knockdowns, and limb damage. Positioning and decision-making are key.• Character Creation & Growth: Design your fighter using a point-buy system that allows flexible builds. Choose stats, skills, and unique traits that change your fighting style.• Loot & Equipment: Equip dozens of melee weapons, shields, and armor with varying quality, durability, and weight. Everything your opponent wears can become yours—if you kill them.• Equip across 21 armour sets, 4 shield types, and 21 weapons — each item also comes in 5 quality levels.• Face 8 handcrafted bosses, plus an infinite stream of procedurally-generated challengers.• Magic System: Master one or more of four spell schools—Body, Heal, Protection, and Elemental—each with their own unique tactical spells and effects.• Legacy & Permadeath: Death is final. But those who defeat you may return as deadly opponents in future runs. Retire your most successful gladiators and one day face them again—this time, from the other side of the sand.• Elite Opponents & Rare Loot: Survive long enough to face powerful champions wielding legendary weapons and armor. Defeating them is your only chance to claim the rarest gear in the game.• Popularity & Crowd Reactions: Earn the love or hatred of the audience based on your actions. The crowd will demand mercy or death. Disobey at your peril.• Between Fights: Spend downtime choosing upgrades, selling loot, healing wounds, or reducing your debt to your owner—if you're still a slave.• Procedural Opponents: Fight a wide variety of enemy archetypes with unique tactics, gear, and personality. No two battles are the same.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Nice little roguelike game! Combat is very complex and difficult. Nice challenge. Graphics are simple but serviceable.3 found this helpful
great start for the game! inventory is mess but the game play bones are solid.2 found this helpful
I have very mixed feelings about this game. I like the idea: arena fighter with choice of fighting styles, positioning, relatively rich character creation (!!! this is the best thing on the game !!!). But that is all I like. The gameplay is terrible, here is how it went for me: I did read the tutorial first (just a short page of instructions) and I did read all the tooltips that showed up. But when the first fight came, I had no idea what I was doing. I attacked and I fell prone (stunned). Well, the log said I misstepped and critically hurt myself. Allright, can happen (it did happen many times since :-D). Another fight, I finally understood that stances can improve hit rate, so I aimed at feet and nice, opponent fell prone and fight was won (yeah, just like that, one hit:-D). So I went for this strategy, it kind of worked, unless I came to opponent and he stun me with attack of opportunity or I killed myself due critical misstep (it does happen a lot and there is no way to tell or influence the probability). I also tried some defensive stances, but there is very little description, I still dont understand what am I doing with it. Then I experimented with spells. I cant say I was s…2 found this helpful
I had a good time playing this game. I was overwhelmed with all the combat options at the beginning but just experimented some and went back and read the tips and got better at the combat and would say the progression is really good because you can start with just basic settings and add more and more complexity as you improve. Fun and enjoyable and pleasant visually. Can't wait to get out of indentured servitude.1 found this helpful
Vomit. Absolute dog vomit.
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