10 Great Sandbox Games Where You Can Build Anything
Those who are overwhelmed with a thirst for creativity, these projects will definitely not leave indifferent.
1. Minecraft
Platform: Windows, macOS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, Windows Phone.
Here, as they say, no comment. Minecraft is an incredibly popular sandbox game that probably everyone has already played. And if you haven’t tried it yet, it’s not clear what you’re waiting for?
In Minecraft, you can do almost anything you want: build, travel, fight monsters, survive in adverse conditions, create ingenious traps, and whatever.
However, construction in the game is the main entertainment. Here you can build castles, cities, railways, high towers and mechanisms of unlimited complexity. With due patience and perseverance, you can even create a calculator, a Tomahawk missile or a huge combat robot.
And when you get tired of all this, roll a dozen mods and turn the game into something completely new and unrecognizable.
2. Terraria
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U.
A kind of analogue of Minecraft in 2D. Here, too, there is a randomly generated world, fights with monsters, exploration of dark caves and the construction of everything and everything. Walk through various biomes – both sunny and friendly, and covered with blood and bad – look for hidden artifacts and create your own weapons to fight bosses.
Construction is an important part of Terraria and perhaps the most fascinating. Of course, you can exist in a house of mud, but then you will not come to the characters important for the game who need proper housing.
Build your own fortress, castle or whole city to safely hide behind the walls from the horrors of the night, goblin raids and beastly “blood-wrenching” monsters. And let your building be not only practical, but also beautiful.
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3. Dwarf Fortress
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux.
A very peculiar and addictive sandbox. This is a game about construction, and economic strategy, and a survival simulator, and a bagel with adventures, and god knows what.
In Dwarf Fortress, you lead a group of seven Dwarves who travel to remote lands in a procedurally generated world to establish a mighty underground (or non-underground) fortress.
Your defenses are constantly threatened by many dangers. Sieges of goblins, humans, elves and kobolds, creepy underground monsters created randomly, hunger, landslides and other troubles can easily bring an unprepared fortress to its knees.
Add to this the brain-exploding appearance and very strange controls. But as soon as you get used to it, you have a huge scope for creativity.
In Dwarf Fortress, you can build anything from an exact copy of Winterfell and huge statues of frozen magma to a crystal city in the sky on a kilometer-long soap support. Already understood the scale of the fun?
4. RimWorld
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Simulator of building a colony on a distant planet with survival, maintaining the psychological climate of the team, fighting with looters and other buns. Your goal is to create a settlement that can cope with all the dangers of a hostile world.
Build reliable shelters, farms for growing food, solar panels for food production and other vital buildings. And be sure to monitor the mental health of your colonists: in especially difficult conditions, even the most persistent can go crazy and start creating all sorts of game.
The world in the game is procedurally generated, so that each new game will be unique. All in all, RimWorld is a kind of Dwarf Fortress, only a little simpler, but still very fun.
5. Factorio
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux.
A very interesting and at the same time very complex sandbox game. Factorio is a simulator of building a huge factory that produces anything from copper wire and pipes to processors, tanks, space rockets and satellites.
You arrive at an uncharted planet inhabited by aggressive life forms to scoop up this world dry. Build drills to extract resources, pump out oil, lay railway tracks and cut down forests. Of course, your factory will harm the environment, but who cares?
As the plant expands, it becomes more complex. We need more and more iron and copper, more fuel, more and more electricity. Automate your production – there is nothing more exciting than watching it live its own life.
6. Kerbal Space Program
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One.
A great hybrid of a sandbox, a construction set and an aerospace simulator. In the Kerbal Space Program, you need to build rockets, satellites and spaceships, and then launch them into space.
The game features realistic physics and orbital mechanics. If you had no idea how spaceships move in orbits, the Kerbal Space Program will be a revelation for you.
At your disposal is the whole solar system, and you can fly to any planets in it, build orbital stations and colonies, ride satellites on lunar rovers and even reconstruct the famous Apollo lunar program. It all depends on your imagination.
7. Besiege
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Gorgeous sandbox in a medieval setting. As the game progresses, you must create a variety of siege weapons to storm impregnable castles and fortresses. And you can build absolutely incredible things.
A huge catapult, trebuchet or ballista? It’s easy! A steam-powered machine gun firing grenades with such force that they pierce a stone wall two meters thick? Unceremoniously. A rocket launcher firing fireworks that will roast your enemies? You can too.
With the proper skill to Besiege, you can build clockwork mechanisms, and huge combat robots, and even wooden helicopters – the game is insane in the best sense of the word. Solve puzzles to unlock level after level, or just build incredible designs in free mode.
The local landscapes are very beautiful – Besiege looks like a kind of medieval miniature. But this game is clearly only for adults, because, among other things, here you can tear enemy knights apart with circular saws and burn peasants with flamethrowers.
8. Prison Architect
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Android, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch.
Have you ever wanted to become a harsh warden of a prison from which no one can escape? Prison Architect gives you this opportunity.
First, you will have to carefully plan the prison building, then build cells, canteens, showers, security rooms and other premises, and then place prisoners there. Surround them with impassable walls and sturdy bars and make sure that none of these dregs of society get out.
There are a lot of options for action. You can, for example, build a prison-sanatorium with a lot of entertainment to re-educate prisoners and help them safely return to society. Or to create hell on earth, where the slightest disobedience is severely punished, and prison riots are suppressed by heavy fire and blows of police batons.
Electric chairs, sniper towers, cameras and remote door control systems are included.
9. Eco
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Eco’s philosophy is different from the rest of the games. In other sandboxes, you can do whatever you want with the world: flood the rivers with magma in Dwarf Fortress, pollute the atmosphere in Factorio, or blow everything up with infernal laughter in Besiege.
In Eco, you will have to interact with the world around you wisely, guided by the principle of “do no harm”. And if you are careless, you will spoil the ecology and make the environment unsuitable for survival.
The game places you on a small planet that is threatened by an asteroid collision. You need to create a civilization capable of surviving. Engage in construction, economics, food cultivation, trade, whatever. The main thing is to try not to harm the planet much.
10. Boundless
Platform: Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4.
Beautiful sandbox with voxel graphics and a bunch of options. Here you can build mighty fortresses, create cities with developed economies and trade and become the ruler of countless lands. Well, or just drop everything and go on a campaign for treasures and artifacts.
Compared to other Minecraft clones, Boundless wins due to very nice landscapes, a nice soundtrack and a very interesting crafting system – not a workbench and a furnace together, as they say.
