Steam Next Fest’s most-popular early demo is an open-world PvP FPS about building badass giant walking mech-bases

SAND. It gets everywhere. And so does its demo, which is climbing up the most-played charts ahead of Steam Next Fest’s official start date.

Steam Next Fest properly begins on October 14, bringing literally thousands of demos along with it, but a bunch of indie teams have cheekily uploaded their demo a few days early to get a little head start on the digital festivities. Developers Hologryph and TowerHaus had the same idea, too, as the demo for the coolest multiplayer game I’ve seen in ages is playable right now and is already charting on Steam’s demo charts based on active daily players.

Set in the remains of an Austro-Hungarian empire on a planet called Sophie, SAND might look pretty familiar at first glance. It’s an open-world shooter where you (and maybe some friends) explore a sandy wasteland, dig for better equipment, ambush strangers for their shiny stuff, and maybe get griefed along the way. The twist is that you can also build your own base, which happens to be a towering steely contraption that walks on all four legs.

The trailer above gives just a glimpse of what’s available in the Steam demo. When it works, SAND most reminds me of my favorite parts of Halo 3’s campaign where you need to infiltrate a moving base of operations, complete with enemies stalking its roofs and turrets bolted on its side, before sabotaging it from the inside and making a quick escape from the impending explosions. I can only imagine the chaos that’ll ensue in the final release when multiple Tramplers clash like a pirate ship war with players jumping from one makeshift balcony to the other.

SAND’s Steam Next Fest demo is purely focused on these PvP aspects, but the developers are still working on features that we won’t see until much later, “such as NPCs, interactive points of interest, new compartments for Tramplers (both for PvP and PvE), new weapons, and different Metas to open new compartments.”

Steam user reviews for the shooter are mixed, though. For every post praising the game’s lofty ambition, there’s another complaining about its admittedly wonky performance that’s making it hard for some people to enjoy a single game. But, even if you’re unable to get a smooth match going in this demo, SAND’s exciting premise alone is worth keeping an eye on.

In the meantime, see our upcoming games of 2024 and beyond list to find out what’s on the horizon.