What is The Sandbox?
The sandbox is a video game that is very similar to Minercraft, you start with your own plot and you can create almost anything. There is a marketplace where you can acquire what you need, you can also sell the items you create. You can also visit and see other people's plots.
Together, users create a metaverse. The project is being developed so that each player can realise their ideas and create their own game. Programming skills are not required.
The game has a token calledSAND, it is created in the Ethereum blockchain and is of type ERC20. At the time of writingSAND ranked 41st among the best cryptocurrencies according to coinmarket, that's not bad for a game.
The sandbox has interesting partners at the time of writing
- Atari
- Opera
- Binance
- Dapp
- Wax, and more
However, the game is still incomplete and is expected to be 100% by 2023.
How do I start playing The Sandbox?
You need to invest to get started
It's quite expensive for a beginner to get started because you have to invest money from the start (it's about $100, depending on the price of ETH and SAND).
To register, you need a wallet that can handle cryptocurrency. MetaMask is a fairly popular cryptocurrency wallet on the Ethereum blockchain, which is also a Sandbox partner. That's why we recommend this wallet, however, you can use any of them.
First steps
You start by creating an experience, when creating an experience you can choose whether to start from scratch (an empty world), or with a template that has various assets already built into the landscape. This ends up in something called land
Country
Your country is part of the metaverse and is 96 blocks deep, 96 wide and 128 high. Here you can build and design gaming experiences, the sizes currently available are 1x1, 1x2 and 2x2.
Theme
Theme determines the terrain blocks in your country. Those available at the time of writing are Lake, Desert, Nether, Meadow, Antarctica and Jungle Islands.
You can decide which theme you want to choose for your game, as well as the size of your LAND by clicking on the "Create New +" button in the upper left part of Game Maker.
Templates
Templates are filled with assets and game elements that allow you to experience the possibilities of the game and get inspired. At the time of writing there are 3 templates you can use, they have lots of assets and a defined theme, which you can also edit to create your own experience without starting from scratch.
Non playable characters
Non-playable characters are an important factor in making your games look alive. While you can add plenty of assets for buildings, decorations and more, it's the NPCs (non-playable characters) who are responsible for making your experience come alive as you complete quests, defeat enemies and collect rewards.
Any character or creature you find in the marketplace can be an NPC and can react in different ways when you interact with them thanks to Game Maker's behaviours and components.
The types of NPCs available now are:
- Ally Fighter
- Citizens
- Farmer
- Bird
Once you have chosen one of the options above, you can customise the behaviour of NPCs.
Enemies
Not all non-playable characters need to be friendly in your games. Enemies are also very important when it comes to adding gameplay elements to an experience, and you can choose the following enemies:
- Ground Predator
- Ground Prey
- Hunting plan
Mission
Missions are a very important element of any game, almost every item in the game can be configured to give or belong to a mission. In this way you can create so-called "quests", only your imagination sets the limit on how you choose to use this mechanic.
By setting the "Ask" behaviour on a character, you can display a short text, a name for the NPC and two text options for players to choose from. Selecting one of the two text options can trigger a message that other ASSETs can be triggered by, such as a door if you select the correct option.
Summary
The information above hopefully gives you an idea of how The Sandbox works, there are a number of different mechanisms that allow you to create your own experience, the marketplace can be used to sell assets that you create yourself, or to buy assets that you want to use in your gaming experience.
Play other people's experiences
If you don't want to create an experience yourself, you can choose to play other people's experiences.
Tips and Tricks for The Sandbox
Rules and Objectives
Knowing what your game is about is very important for players who are just getting into your game, some basic instructions, title and backstory of your game can be added so that they appear as soon as you start playing. This is not only used to give important information that you want players to know, but it will also allow you to set up objectives and a description for it, such as finding a key, collecting materials, facing some enemies and so on. Combine this with missions to create a great experience.
You can find the rules option in the top bar when editing your game by clicking on the "Rules" button, here you have the option to add:
- The number of ASSETS and their rarity in your game.
- Title and description of the game.
- A title and description of the game's objectives that you want to apply.
- Type of goal (whether it is a time goal, a counter to defeat enemies or collect more).
- To display a victory screen when the objectives have been completed.
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