SAND Development Update - January '26 | What's the latest in 2026?

[p][/p][p]Servus Allies! [/p][p][/p][p]A couple of weeks ago, we announced that SAND: Raiders of Sophie will be launching this March and today, we want to share some of the work our developers have been doing in preparation for this rapidly approaching release date. [/p][p][/p][p]Read on to find out what's been happening behind the scenes lately![/p][p][/p][h3]What have your main focuses have been over the last month?[/h3][p][/p][p]Over the past month, our primary focus has been on technical issues and bug fixes. This has largely involved addressing problems that lingered after the last playtest, while also giving us the opportunity to make progress on some longer-standing plans for areas of the game that had been put on hold while we addressed the playtest feedback.[/p]

• [p]We've implemented full controller support: improving control comfort, aiming, and aim assist. We'll be balancing this during some upcoming internal playtests, but it's already working pretty nicely in game.[/p]
• [p]Parkour animations have been (re)added to the game! The character no longer “floats in the air” when jumping onto surfaces, which addresses a very common complaint during and following the playtest.[/p]
• [p]We've identified and fixed numerous disconnect issues in corner cases, such as during loading or specific events. Many of which were key issues during the last round of playtests.[/p]
• [p]We also created several prototypes of compartments and weapons. Some didn’t quite work out exactly as planned, but many others turned out really well but we’ll share more about them in a future dev update![/p]

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• [p]Our artists finally had time to fix up materials, starting with everything brick-related. So a number of textures in the game have been significantly improved or reworked.[/p]

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• [p]We made it possible to load cannons with different types of shells, and accordingly added more shell variants.[/p]

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• [p]We added a new type of point of interest - the Gunboat. (and have a couple more up our sleeves we hope to get added before March...)[/p]

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• [p]A third tier for revolvers and the shotgun have been added to the game.[/p]

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• [p]Item sorting has been completely reworked. Items are now grouped by type instead of being scattered “randomly" (which was another very common complaint during the playtest).[/p]

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How is optimization coming along?:
[/h3][p]Very well, with recent internal playtests seeing a huge increase in performance and stability over even the latest playtest builds. Here's a little summary of some of the areas of focus the last couple of months: [/p]

• [p]Good progress has been made on game server optimisation. In large-scale battles, the server now maintains a higher update rate than before.[/p]
• [p]Shadows have been massively optimized to improve overall game performance.[/p]
• [p]Multiple backend systems have been reworked. While a lot of these were minor changes, they still have a sizable impact on performance.[/p]
• [p]Trampler movement has also been optimized significantly, reducing the CPU time required for its calculations.[/p]

[h3]Anything else you'd like to share?[/h3][p][/p][p]We've seen a lot of questions about it recently and wanted to inform everyone that the minimum and recommended specs do not reflect the game in its current state. These will be updated closer to launch to better align with the game’s final performance and more in line with comparable modern titles.[/p][p]
Wishlist SAND: Raiders of Sophie on Steam now to be notified when it launches on Steam! [/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]Come and join us on our social media pages to keep yourself up to date with all the news and updates for SAND or join the discussion over on Discord now! [/p][p][/p][p]Discord - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram [/p][p][/p][p]- Hologryph & tinyBuild Games[/p]