// PC GAMER — GAMING
Sand: Raiders of Sophie is like Sea of Thieves on land, but even tougher for solo players
Cruise the dunes in search of loot and get into cannon battles with other salty crews.
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Sand: Raiders of Sophie launched into early access today after a number of last-minute delays, so I finally got the chance to try out the first-person base-building extraction shooter.
My first thought after about two hours of play? It's like Sea of Thieves but on land, and if your vehicle gets destroyed you've gotta build a new one: you can't just wait a few seconds and respawn with a pristine new ride.
The walking bases, called tramplers, are the star of the game. Before you embark on a mission—you're in outer space, orbiting a desert planet on some sort of Victorian-era gaslamp space station, by the way—you need to prep yourself and your trampler. You can build one yourself by snapping together modules (I haven't played too much with this feature yet) or use a preexisting model.
Take a couple handheld weapons like a pistol, shotgun, or rifle, fill your pockets with ammo, then bring a crate containing heavy guns for your trampler, like 40mm and 80mm cannons.
Once you deploy to the planet, you need to run around your customizable walking base getting it ready for action: mount the guns in a few places on the exterior and load them up with ammo. Manually fire up the huge engine, then run to the steering emplacement and start throwing giant levers like you're Kenneth Branagh driving his spider-mech in Wild Wild West. Your big, noisy, smoke-spewling behemoth will begin slowly stomping across the dunes.
Even the smallest mechs are big enough that getting around on them takes time, having to clamber up ladders and dash through the different compartments to reach the guns, engine, steering, and storage areas. I've only played Sand solo, and there's definitely that same ultra-busy Sea of Thieves feel to it. I've got to pilot this huge mech, adjust how fast I'm going, and check the map, all while scanning the horizon for lootable locations and enemy tramplers (by spying ominous clouds of black smoke instead of distant sails).
I also have to leave my mobile base all the time, scurry nervously across the sand on foot when I want to do some looting, terrified the whole time that another mech is gonna stride up and start blowing mine to pieces. That's a very Sea of Thieves-like feeling.
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