Sand Saga Insider: July 2025

Patrik Harag, 2025-08-02

July brought another round of incremental improvements to Sand Saga, particularly focused on humans and a helpful addition to the modding system. Let's take a look at what changed.

May Additions

Controllable Humans
One of the most exciting additions in July was the ability to directly control a human using the keyboard. You can now take control of the first or oldest living human in the simulation using the WASD keys. This feature opens the door to new kinds of sandbox gameplay, as well as more creative scenario design. For example, a scenario can now have goals like getting the controllable human to a specific location or simply trying to keep them alive for some period of time.

Modding
In JSON mods, it is now possible to define terrains using layers. Layers can have a constant height, be defined by a set of points connected by either linear or smooth interpolation, or be random using simplex noise. On top of that, you can place grass and trees. For an example, see: Workshop Item – Example Scenes. This method of defining terrain is the same one used by scenarios you may already know from Sand Saga, including tutorials and missions.

Conclusion

In the next month, I'll likely focus further on improving the humans. See you next month!