An Extensive Review of the 25+ games on The Sandbox
A review of The Sandbox in comparison to Decentraland
Important 5-Month Update
It’s been 5 months since I posted this. Since then, I’ve gotten a much better idea about the tokenomics and rewards system for The Sandbox. It is not looking good.
All of their rewards payouts are significantly delayed.
For the longest time, I hadn’t received any rewards for a dozen events I joined, including the February, March, and April Festivals.
Originally, according to estimates from Community leaders on Discord, we were supposed to get our rewards within 2 weeks after the event ended. 3 months after the events, I hadn’t received any rewards, and they hadn’t responded to my ticket yet in months.
Something very suspicious is going on.
Some people have gotten paid 2 months after the events ended, which was already significantly delayed. Many others have not gotten paid. I’ve put in my own ticket for the February event, but I haven’t received a single update.
They have a Notion tracking website that states rewards for French Weeks and March Festival have been paid, but most players on Discord have been complaining about not being paid.
At this point, I figured either:
The Sandbox was completely incompetent and unable to figure out who gets rewards, or
It was all a Ponzi scheme.
Remediation Rewards FINALLY received
Sometime in July about 4-5 months after the first events missing rewards, I finally received Remediation claims for 8 events all the same time. I was totally not expecting this because they didn’t respond to my ticket or send me any notifications even once. In addition, some of these claims seem to be jumbled as I received Land Pass rewards but not Avatar Pass rewards even though I own an Avatar and not Land.
So that answers the question: They’re just really incompetent at delivering rewards (and figuring out who gets them since I got mismatched rewards).
I’m happy I finally got the rewards, but still disappointed it took The Sandbox this many months and that they didn’t communicate it.
Original Post from February
After my slightly-disappointing 1-week exploration of Decentraland (DCL), I decided to visit the other popular crypto “Metaverse”, The Sandbox (TSB). The difference between the two are night and day.
Unlike DCL, TSB is actually an enjoyable gaming experience, but the crypto part is still very incomplete (which is forgivable since it’s in alpha). DCL is the opposite: its gaming sucks, but the crypto part works fine.
This long article is divided into several sections:
Similarities between DCL and TSB
Differences between DCL and TSB
Hints/Guide for TSB
Reviews of all 22 Games in TSB during February + 3 more released afterwards
Similarities between DCL and TSB
Purchasable Land plots: Both Metaverses are similar in that people can buy really-expensive plots of land (usually > $1K) and develop virtual environments on them.
Both are mostly Free to Play: You can explore nearly all of both Metaverses Certain experiences and benefits can be obtained if you hold paid NFTs. In Decentraland, about 1% of locations can only be accessed by holding paid NFTs. For The Sandbox, some of the season rewards are only given to Land/Avatar holders (previously alpha Season Pass holders).
Both have NFTs that can be used to augment your in-game player avatar.
Differences between DCL and TSB
World layout:
Decentraland: All tiles of land are interconnected within a single world. You can immediately walk from one tile to another. The tiles are also very small (16m x 16m). Each tile is some place to explore.
The Sandbox: Each tile of land is its separate world, but you can teleport and link to adjacent tiles. All current worlds are actual games. It takes a long 30-60 seconds to teleport between tiles. I think you’re redownloading the map every time. Tiles are very big (96m x 96m), making them 36x bigger than Decentraland tiles. They’re also usually 3-5x cheaper to buy. A $1K-sized tile on The Sandbox would cost $100K on Decentraland.
The playable map (Feb 2023) for The Sandbox is a tiny fraction of the size of its full map
Because it’s still in alpha, every couple of weeks, new tiles get added and removed from the play map. Here’s what it looks like 2 weeks later in March 2023. All the Lunar New Year maps were removed and replaced by the 3 Rabbids maps:
Play map in Mar 2023 And here’s what the full non-playable map looks like. Some of these were for past events that have been removed. Eventually, many past playable tiles will be available again once the full version of The Sandbox is launched.
The Full map. Only some tiles are playable. Gaming Focus
DCL is not focused on gaming. Many of the tiles are for storefronts, businesses, advertisements, and other activities. Only a small portion of them are for gaming.
The Sandbox is very focused on the gaming experience. Nearly every map has mini-games and quests.
Gameplay Visuals
Decentraland uses smooth visuals (like The Sims 4), but there’s a lack of consistency. Some places are built well while most others aren’t. Most tiles are either empty, incomplete, or poorly-built.
DCL has smooth visuals The Sandbox uses blocky visuals like Lego games. However, its levels are more consistent and better-designed, so they look higher-quality than most DCL locations despite being blocky.
TSB has blocky visuals
Gameplay Sound
DCL’s sound engine is so broken. Most tiles don’t even have sound, and sound abruptly cuts in and out when you move around.
TSB did a really good job creating a consistent background soundtrack throughout in each game tile. It has professionally-created music.
Gameplay Experience is much better on The Sandbox
Decentraland is in beta. It feels like they concentrated the crypto part while completely neglecting the game engine. The game engine is extremely clunky and buggy. Items and locations often randomly fail to load or despawn. I couldn’t go 5-10 minutes without encountering a bug. It feels like you’re exploring an empty foreign country or empty mall, but it’s not fun to play as a game. All of the mini-games are very bland. The 2 most popular locations in Decentraland are 1) The Ice Poker, which has pyramid scheme tokenomics and 2) WonderMine, which has pyramid scheme tokenomics, and NO ONE is playing it for fun.
The Sandbox is in alpha, but it feels like they did a great job on the game part (while neglecting the crypto part). The gameplay is smooth and consistent. You can attack, block, roll, and parry. It feels like they took the basic Dark Souls mechanics and brought it to a Roblox/Lego game. The mini-game are actually fun, but they’re still mainly single-player find/collect item fetch mini-games. A lot of the games feel like simpler versions of New Donk City from Super Mario Odyssey, but with only the simpler fetch quests.
Rabbids NY in Plunga City. They fit ALL this in the smallest-sized 1x1 tile. One concern for TSB is that the current game maps have little replay value. You beat them once, and there’s no desire to play them again. But there are so many game maps. This video channel probably has a hundred different TSB game walkthroughs, though only a small portion of them as available at a time.
Currently, 99% of purchased land plots are not playable. Only the lands in the Game Map are playable, and the available ones have a polished gameplay experience. It seems that during the alpha phase, games are released as special events and are only available to play for a limited time.
Blockchain/NFT Experience is much better on Decentraland
The crypto part of The Sandbox is a giant mess. I suppose that’s expected since it’s in alpha release.
TSB Avatar and Land NFTs use the Ethereum network, so transaction fees are insane. When it costs $100 to create an NFT contract, and each NFT costs $5-20 to mint, those NFTs are going to be really expensive. The cheapest NFT avatars are $30-50. They are slowly moving their NFTs to the Polygon PoS network, but there is no immediately timeline to migrate existing land/avatar NFTs, which is much needed.
The Sandbox NFT marketplace and website are also very clunky to navigate. The website is SLOW, I can’t load pages in new tabs, and they don’t load unless the tab is in focus.
Rewards system
Decentraland doesn’t have a rewards system. You just explore. Some locations like Ice Poker’s Texas Hold’em have a play-to-earn grinding element that require you to invest first before you can earn (i.e. a pyramid scheme).
The Sandbox gives out prizes for events. They have massive SAND and NFT giveaways for beating game events. I’m not sure how long these will last. The big problem is that their rewards website is somewhat broken (hard to tell if you completed objectives), and so many people complain about not getting rewards and have to go through a troubleshooting system. Also, you have to mint the reward token on Ethereum. It’s totally not worth it unless your reward is > $20 because it costs money to mint the reward, list it, and then sell it. The Sandbox really needs to move to a cheaper network.
TSB rewards require Know your client (KYC): All the P2E rewards in The Sandbox require a scary KYC where you have to dox yourself and upload your real ID.
Multiplayer experience (or lack thereof)
Decentraland: Aside from a couple (less than 3) popular Decentraland locations, Decentraland is empty and lonely. You can travel 30 minutes without encountering another player. But hey, some people enjoy being alone.
Sandbox: All current maps are single player experiences. You see people pop-in and out. But it’s like watching Dark Souls ghosts, and you don’t really have any need to interact with them. It doesn’t feel lonely because there are TONS of NPCs everywhere.
Guides / Gameplay Tips
Don't worry about dying. You just respawn at the previous checkpoint, but your progress is saved.
However, do finish every quest before leaving the map. The game resets if you leave and return.
For multi-choice questions, just guess. You can always guess again immediately afterwards if you get them wrong.
There are YouTube walkthroughs of every map. Some speed runners can finish all of these in 10 minutes each.
For many collection quests (red envelopes, fish balls, batteries), there more items on the map than needed to finish the quest. So you don’t have to search for every last one of them.
Movement and keys:
Tap shift twice while moving to dodge.
Hold the right-mouse button to block
Block right before an attack to parry, but blocking usually negates all damage anyways.
You can always zoom out using the scroll wheel on the mouse. It makes platforming easier on some levels.
To equip items, go to the inventory and drag the item to a slot on the right
Press "T" to emote
Reviews of all 22 (+3) currently-available games in TSB
TSB is constantly adding and removing games from the list of currently-playable games. There are actually a lot more than 22 games, but most of the TSB games are only released for a limited amount of time for special events before being replaced.
BlackcowFarmer on YouTube has a large list of previously-available TSB games.
Grading scale
I’m going to be pretty lenient in my grading since these games are designed to be played by people of all ages (e.g. kid-friendly).
Gameplay Rating: Don’t expect a masterpiece. I’m setting the grading so that:
Typical Decentraland game: 0/5
Average Roblox/Minecraft map: 1.5/5
Farmville: 2/5
Average GTA 4 mini-quest: 2.5/5
Average Mario Odyssey level, Stardew Valley: 6/5
Braid, Majora’s Mask, Prey, Subnautica: 7/5
Portal 2: 8/5
Difficulty Rating: My scale is set so that:
Typical kid’s or Lego game: 2/5
Typical platformer: 5/5
Typical Metroidvania: 6/5
Dark Souls, Hollow Knight: 7/5
Celeste: 8/5
MetaChinatown
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 1/5, 10 min
MetaChinatown is the center hub for the current season of TSB. There only a couple of quests here, but there are signs within this game you can use to travel to the other adjacent maps. However, I prefer to use the main website map to navigate between game tiles.
The current season of TSB is very heavily China/Hong Kong-themed. Half of the maps were designed for Hong Kong companies.
MTR (Mass Transit Railway)
Rating: 3/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 20 min
This map was designed for the Hong Kong MTR.
This is a very-consistently designed location. The mini-quests are quite simple and mostly fetch quests. However, the last item-collection quest is a pain in the ass because you have to find every last one of them. Use a YouTube video guide if you have trouble locating them.
Paca Death Run
Rating: 4/5, Difficulty: 5/5 (or 7/5 on hard mode), 60 min
Fuck this game map. It is long and hard, and that’s how I like it. This was Metroidvania-like platforming, but slightly easier. Still, it’s by far the most difficult TSB game.
Everything kills you in 1 shot.
The goal of the game is to reach the top of the mountain while getting past every death trap. Luckily, there are plenty of checkpoints. (For the love of god, don’t pick HARD mode unless you’re a platforming speed-runner. Many of the checkpoints are deactivated in Hard mode.)
The only bad part of this map were the 2 side quests where you have to find the hidden llamas. The 7 llamas are annoying because they’re hidden behind hard-to spot gaps in walls. I used a video guide to find that blue llama, and I still don’t get how people found it. Did people get hints outside of the game?
But in the end, it was worth the challenge.
Chord Hero
Rating: 3/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 10 min
It was quite easy and short. You just collect items. I like its art and music design.
Parisland
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 30 min
This is the Paris Hilton map for the Valentine’s quest. You can get 25/27 of the quest progress from Parisland and the last 2/27 from the Parisland Club.
It was just too long and repetitive. And it just seems so demeaning to be Paris Hilton’s fetch boy doing menial tasks for her. At least it’s a pretty beach resort. Good job on the art design.
Nspace WMCC - Greater China Park 01
Rating: 4/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 30 min
I love this map. The art and music are both kickass. There are so many details with the NPCs that make this location feel so alive. It’s amazing how much you can fit into a single 96m x 96m tile.
Quest Hint: Smartie is in an art gallery.
Little Fighter - Mongkok
Rating: 4/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 30 min
There are 8 mini-games in a small area. This felt like a smaller Chinese version of New Donk City from Mario Odyssey.
Hint: A lot of doors can be opened. Press E to open them.
PCCW HKT Futurera
Rating: 3/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 30 min
This map was designed for the Hong Kong PCCW telecommunications company.
There are tons of mini-games here. This area and music are pretty cool, and it’s a Hong Kong-based telecoms company. It’s amazing how they fit this whole area with 4 mini-locations in a single 96m x 96m tile.
Hint: For the towel mission, look for a door at the back of the boat to go downstairs
McDull LAND
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 20 min
This is a noticeably big map with 4 main mini-quests. Nothing particularly special.
I kept getting stuck on this map because it wasn’t what to do. If you're having trouble finding the food items for McDull for the last mission, go back to the restaurant and pick up the other food. You have to jump on the counter.
Sun Hung Kai & Co
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 20 min
This map was designed for the Hong Kong Sun Hung Kai property developer company
There is a hidden 10th quest. Near the end of Cynthia's quest right after you find the deed, drop down the hole. The entrance to the Pirate's Hideout is hidden in that area.
The Legend of Sword and Fairy
Rating: 1/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 30 min
I hated this map. The gameplay was very confusing, and I wasn’t sure where to go most of the time. There was also so much backtracking across the map.
The Fish mini-game is buggy. If you miss, you have to wait 3 seconds before trying again.
During the search for Anu, there is a cave at the top of the mountain. This is a very confusion cave. In the cave, there is a lever behind one of the breakable walls. It opens up a wall at the top of the cave.
The final boss fight was the worst. You blink in and die in 5 seconds over and over again. It was a really bad boss fight, and the gameplay was so confusing.
The World Letter x Lululand
Rating: 4/5, Difficulty: 4/5, 30 min
This map is huge. I really liked the art design of the map. And I liked that there were so many hidden locations.
I think this map was a tribute to diversity and love.
Hints:
There is a hidden path behind the vending machine at the start of the map with probably 50 clouds
There is a hidden path behind the restaurant that leads to an area with tons of clouds
The "Find More Roses" quest is HARD because you need EVERY rose. If you're having trouble, search for the "ALL Quest Walktrough" [sic] on YouTube.
AXADIA
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 20 min
This was designed for a security-based company. It’s very short and a little more creative than other maps.
Hint: The QR codes are not just ads.
Boys Land
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 20 min
This is KPop-themed map where people vote on the future members of a band.
Sports Land City Center
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 1/5, 15 min
This one’s super easy. Just a series of sports-related mini quests. Finish at the top of the Parkour mini-game. I like the art design.
Sports Land Carnival
Rating: 3/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 15 min
Another artistic map. This was pretty easy, except for finding the Jewels. The Jewels only show up when you get close to them. Read the clues.
MetaGreen 2023 CNY Launch
Rating: 4/5, Difficulty: 3/5, 40 min
This is a tribute to MetaGreen, and environmentally and ESG focused group. You get fed lots of info about ESG and environmental conservation here.
The gun-shooting puzzle really sucks. I decided to use the climbing walls from the previous puzzle to launch to skip half that puzzle.
Looking for that dog took me forever. It's at the top of the mall, which is the tallest building in the location.
The Silk Road
Rating: 1/5, Difficulty: 1/5, 30 min
This game was too easy and bland for me. You might enemies and collect items. That’s it. It was about as enjoyable as playing a Lego video game as an adult. I didn’t like the art design either.
Make sure you equip the items dropped from the scorpions; otherwise, it’ll be even more tedious.
Missing Parts Social Hub
Rating: 1/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 15 min
I think the “Missing Parts” is part of a series of Metaverse drama stories. The other chapters of the "Missing Parts" are currently closed.
It’s just a couple super-easy mini-quests. I found it too easy and quite boring.
The only one that's somewhat time-consuming is climbing the tower.
Missing Parts - Chapter 1
Rating: 1/5, Difficulty: 0/5, 15 min
This is the first Sandbox game I actually hated.
It’s a linear super-long story game. The Sandbox's game engine is unsuitable for War and Peace-length novel like this.
There is way too much monologue, not enough action. I have to go through minutes of dialogue between each action. It's absolutely infuriating. This is the first game I wanted to quit after 10 minutes of playing.
As my English teacher would say: "Show, don't tell"
The text dialogues are too small. The game would've been better with a few paragraphs instead of hundreds of 1-line sentences. That's probably a limitation of the game engine. I also hate how the dialogues prevent me from moving.
Rabbids Lunar New Bwah!
Rating: 2/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 15 min
This is one of the 2 free Rabbids Lunar New Year maps. Rabbids have decended from the sky and are causing chaos. You're supposed to save the village by doing very simple mini-quests.
It has a really cool Lunar New Year + Rabbids theme. Overall, it's cute and artistic, but it's just not challenging at all.
Rabbids New Year in Plunga City
Rating: 3/5, Difficulty: 2/5, 30 min
This one is much more creative than the other free Rabbids map. This one is just full of mini-quests. It's overwhelming in a good way.
I love the art here, and it feels so lively. The color puzzle is good. The bad part was that I found a few bugs, and many people couldn’t complete the quests.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m impressed with The Sandbox. Its game engine is so much more polished and bug-free than Decentraland, and it’s actually fun to play. There are a ton of partners who have already bought land in The Sandbox, and 99% of them are not on the play map. Many were available to play in the past for special events. Others will be released in the future.
TSB is still in alpha release, but it’s already showing a lot of promise.
There are several things I want TSB to fix before their final release:
Gameplay-related:
Needs a first-person view option. Certain areas are hard to navigate in 3rd person. I noticed that they didn’t have any FPS or Third-Person Shooter gameplay. There was one brief shooting mini-game, and it sucked because aiming didn’t work accurately in 3rd-person view.
It needs an in-game map: You have to leave (or alt-tab) out of the game to switch to a game. It’s ridiculous they don’t have an in-game map for teleporting to a different location.
Games should have some save progress. I hate how each game resets whenever I leave and return, which really sucks if you don’t have 30-60 minutes of free time to finish a map. It only saves your reward progress when you complete them.
There need to be replayable maps. All maps right now a single-player maps that have zero replay value. I beat them once, and I don’t revisit.
Needs faster load times and better caching. Redownloading the map every time you visit is not efficient.
Infrastructure-related:
Better website: I hate going to their website to navigate between areas. Their website is slow and buggy. I can’t open links in tabs and pages often fail to load.
They need to move to a low-fee network. I’ve heard that they’re moving to Polygon. This needs to happen now because their seasonal rewards are nearly worthless due to fees. The cheapest Avatars are much too expensive ($50-100+ after fees) because the network fees to mint them and their contracts are expensive.
Better reward detection: The rewards website needs better detection for when rewards are cleared. It’s still work in progress.
Sustainable rewards: Their play-to-earn scheme needs to be sustainable. I believe they (or at least their partners) are currently spending money to attract players through rewards.