Sand: Raiders of Sophie finally launches in early access after a string of delays

Sand: Raiders of Sophie hit Steam Early Access on June 22 after one of the more chaotic launch runs in recent memory — multiple delays across two years, a last-minute pivot back to early access, and even a couple of extra stumbles on launch day itself.

The game is a first-person PvPvE extraction shooter built around giant walking mechanical bases called tramplers. Before each mission drop onto a desert alien planet, you prep your trampler by snapping together modules, mounting heavy weapons like 40mm and 80mm cannons on the exterior, loading them with ammo, manually firing up the engine, and then steering from a lever-filled emplacement. The whole thing moves slowly and noisily across the dunes, and getting from one end of it to the other means climbing ladders and sprinting through compartments. Enemies come in two flavors: ghoul-like NPCs guarding loot locations on foot, and orbital automatons that drop in and stomp after you. Other players bring their own tramplers, and you can spot them by the black smoke on the horizon — a deliberate echo of Sea of Thieves' distant sails. The game launched at a 21% discount for the first two weeks on Steam.

The road to launch was genuinely rough. An early access release planned for April 2025 was scrapped entirely, and the game briefly pivoted to a full release targeting March 2026 — which also slipped. A revised date of June 10 was set, then pushed again to June 22, with the early access label reinstated. On launch day itself, the team told fans in the official Discord that "a couple of wires got crossed that we need Valve's help us uncross," delaying the actual go-live by several hours. A 10-minute countdown expired and was replaced by a 20-minute one, which Sand beat to the punch by going live before it ran out.

Early impressions from PC Gamer's hands-on peg it as a solo-unfriendly but gloriously chaotic experience — piloting, gunning, repairing, and navigating all at once, with sound design that sells the weight of every cannon shot and mechanical footstep. Whether the wait was worth it is still an open question, but the trampler concept alone looks like a strong hook for players who liked Sea of Thieves' frantic crew-management loop and want it on land.