Sandustry is a factory automation game, so your goal is to build machines that do the work for you. You start on a big, unexplored planet with many different landscapes, and the whole world can be dug up and reshaped. Every pixel counts as a resource, so digging is how you gather the materials your factory runs on. You begin with nothing more than a conveyor belt and grow from there.
Once you have materials, you use their physical behavior to move and change them, since every grain of sand and flake of snow follows its own rules. Your factory starts with conveyor belts and grows to include filters, drones, pipes, and pumps. You connect those machines and logistics into production chains, where each machine passes its result to the next, so a raw material can be turned into something new by the end of the line.
Research opens higher tiers, which are the next levels of technology, along with new processing routes that let your factory do more. Exploration gives you goals beyond the factory itself, through puzzles, ancient structures underground, and artifacts that unlock boons once you find and research them. Tier 7, called Orbital Delivery, is a branch for refining sand further, with a production chain involving magnets, electrolysis, and photosynthesis.
- Developer
- Lantto Games
- Publisher
- Hooded Horse
- Release
- Early Access: 2026-08-13
- Platforms
- PC (Windows), Mac (macOS), SteamOS + Linux
Game data
Materials
Sandustry's materials are the ground, liquids, gases, solids and wisps that make up the world and your factory. Each type moves by its own rules, density decides what sinks and what floats, and many materials can be turned into something else.
Buildings
Buildings are the machines and structures players place to move, sort, refine, heat, power and control materials in Sandustry. They fall into groups for logistics, production, fluids and gases, thermal, energy, special, blocks and logic, and each group covers a different part of a factory. Most unlock through Factory Tier research, while others come from Conservatory rewards and Artifact upgrades.
Sandustry gameplay tips
- Soak sand in water to make wet sand for gold. Sand absorbs the water around it and turns into wet sand, which you can sift for gold. The water reservoirs you use are limited and slowly drain as the sand takes it in, so plan for how long a supply will last.
- Heat ice on purpose, and plan for the steam. Ice melts into water when heated, and water that boils turns into steam that rises. Steam that reaches the sky comes back down as rain, so the cycle doesn't stop at the steam stage.
- Water seeds to grow flowers, then ignite them. Watered seeds bloom into flowers, and fire can ignite those flowers to produce resources. That gives you a second source of resources alongside digging.
- Build diagonal Foundations as a double-lined staircase. A single line of angled Foundations lets liquids leak through, which is a common source of confusion for new players. The double-lined staircase is the shape you'll normally want anyway.
- Check that both materials and their output are allowed inside a filter before you rely on them meeting at its edge. Materials only interact across a filter boundary when both of them and the output are permitted inside the filter.