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Ever wondered what happened to good old cooperative games? Recently, we can spend hours searching through game marketplaces, and all we seem to find is competitive shooters, battle royales and battle arenas. The lack of true cooperative gameplays is somewhat frustrating, and we end up playing the same games over and over again.

Great interactive adventures are getting scarce, with fewer titles with each new generation of consoles. But, following the new trend of blockchains, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), there is one game that promises to provide a whole new gaming experience by giving total control to players: The Sandbox Game.

The Sandbox is an upcoming adventure game based on the Ethereum blockchain that allows players to design and build virtual worlds, create characters, scenery objects and equipment, and develop games and interactive levels that can be shared with the game’s community in a decentralized marketplace. The game features a virtual ecosystem in which gamers can engage either as players or creators, share gaming experiences and participate in the governance of its metaverse.

The best of all: there are multiple gameplay mechanics that can be applied to worlds and levels, so you can create your own cooperative adventures, with any narratives and characters you want, play them with your friends, and even earn money to do so, in the form of a cryptocurrency called SAND. The Sandbox is currently in its open-beta stage, but players can already pre-register, and purchase SAND and many assets to be used in the game.

 

Design, model and animate!

The Sandbox is powered by three integrated tools, and the first one is VoxEdit, a powerful content creation tool for those who want to become creators in the game. VoxEdit is a 3D modelling software that, under the philosophy of “create, animate, play”, allows creators to design or import their own voxel objects, animate them, export them as NFTs called assets, and publish, sell or trade them in the game’s worldwide marketplace.

VoxEdit provides a creative platform for creators to design and animate models with the same functionality as professional 3D software, such as Maya or Cinema 4D, and rig any model in any way they want. The tool uses a skeletal system with hierarchies and is the only modelling software that allows to both model and animate voxels.

 

Create your adventures

The second tool behind the Sandbox is probably the most important one. After creating assets with VoxEdit or purchasing them on the marketplace, players can import, place and use these assets within LANDs, the virtual building lots inside the Sandbox, using the Game Maker tool. Apart from importing assets, Game Maker allows gamers to apply physics and gameplay mechanics to create interactive worlds and levels.

Thanks to Game Maker, creators can assign predefined behaviours, apply scripts and storylines, and choose from many nuanced gameplay mechanics to turn their piece of LAND into a full game experience. You can finally create your own adventures, apply cooperative mechanics, and share these games with your friends with the game’s social features. 

 

Buy, sell and trade!

Finally, everything you create in the Sandbox can be traded or sold in the game’s web-based marketplace, using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and non-fungible tokens. NFTs are units of data on a blockchain that represent an unique item - such as a piece of virtual art, a video, a song, or an item in a video game - and provide proof of ownership and allow creative rights to be bound to creators.

You can monetize any content you create, and even make a profit. Players are encouraged to develop assets and trade them, and create multiple adventures for other players to join in, thus building an integrated gaming community.

 

SAND

To be able to play games, create assets and buy LANDs, players must have some money in the form of SAND, The Sandbox’s own cryptocurrency. If you’re a player, you can use SAND to play games, visit other players’ worlds and play their adventures, and buy anything in the marketplace.

As a creator, you use SAND to buy LANDs and create adventures. But the currency works as a governance token as well, and SAND holders can participate in decisions regarding the game’s metaverse.

Thanks to the development of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, developers can finally reward players for the time and effort invested in the game, by allowing them to monetize their content and profit from their hard work.