Sandboxels Review

Sandboxels is a falling-sand simulation game developed and published by R74n. Having been released back on the 17th of May 2025 on Steam, it has been getting a few updates ever since. Now, Sandboxels is available for free right now — you can play it on your browser — so charging anything (even as low as £0.89) will require something big to be worth the asking price. I’ve played a similar game on my phone called sand:box back in, like, 2015. According to my research (well, Google), the browser version was released in 2021. So, I ask this simple question: why?

Well, let’s start with the basics. Upon firing up the game, you have access to 500 unique elements to play with that you can manipulate to create interesting reactions. Set balloons on fire, cook eggs, let a virus spread through the pile and cure it with a vaccine. Just select the material and place it down where you please. Unleash that inner mad scientist that you were never smart enough to become, and it is pretty fun to see all the effects.

It can even be quite pretty seeing how things play out, even when it’s portrayed as simple pixels. However, that’s not the absolute limit of what you can have. You can mod the game through Sandboxels’ Mod List or heading to GitHub and see what’s available there, and over the years, there have been tons of them released.

However, what makes Sandboxels special is the fact that you can share your creations with other players. By checking out the Saves tab (and confirming you’re at least 13 years old), you have access to whatever canvases other users have uploaded. What makes the paid version different here is that you also have access to the Steam Workshop and can subscribe to whatever’s available there, which is very nice… if a little unnecessary considering you can just load it up within the game itself.

Additionally, there’s no limit to whatever you can download. You get access to unlimited saves in the paid version, so you don’t have to worry about losing any of your favourite piles of dirt to play around in. And since you’re playing using your PC rather than through a browser, you get access to a lot more screen space than you would usually have.

But if you want to talk to other players or check out what the dev is cooking, there are quite a few links to the Discord; you can join at any time and see whatever bonkers things users have made with the resources available. Besides all of that, you don’t get any advertisements to annoy you (which is getting worse with each passing day), and just buying the game directly supports the developer. Hey, it’s cool to support the little guy.

Shout out to Ruller for this incredible thing!

Sandboxels is… well, a sandbox. There’s no goal or progression, just play with the elements at hand and see what happens. It’s fun for what it is, maybe even a little educational for any curious kids. It might not have the most worthwhile features to entice you to purchase this version, but I don’t think it needs them. It’s a boredom killer, it doesn’t really need to be anything else, and if you want a virtual office toy, this wouldn’t be a bad choice. I’m not personally interested in it, but a Very Positive rating from 200 reviews (1% away from Overwhelmingly) has to mean something, right?