Exploring the World of the SAND LAND Video Game

The world is still mourning the loss of the beloved artist Akira Toriyama. His unique worlds and love of fantastical machinery have captured the imagination of fans worldwide for decades. Fans, at the very least, can look forward to one last hurrah from Toriyama in the form of the upcoming SAND LAND game coming from Namco Bandai. We were lucky enough to preview an early build of the game.

The SAND LAND game takes after the manga of the same name, reuniting fans with the demon prince Beelzebub and his entourage, his caretaker Thief, and Sheriff Rao. You are dropped into the eponymous sandy land of Sand Land, a vast desert filled with ruined villages and roving monsters. Belz can hold his own against monsters with a simple attack combo and his handful of special moves, along with some support abilities from his friends. However, hoofing it on foot and attacking bare-handed is hardly the best way of going about things: even if you diligently train against weaker monsters, Belz will inevitably struggle against larger foes—or enemy soldiers riding Bots, the armored machines of the world of SAND LAND. Fortunately, Belz has his own set of Bots he can summon at will; Belz can store up to five Bots with him at any moment (in capsules, of course), each with their own set of weapons. There are five kinds of Bots Belz can ride: motorcycles, Walker Bots, Battle Armor, Battle Tanks, and hovercrafts. Any one of these vehicles is faster than walking, and the weapons you can attach to them will make you a match for any soldier in the field. But these Bots are also useful for traveling the world: the motorcycle's speed makes crossing great distances a snap, the Walker Bot's jumping makes it great for scaling cliffs or reaching heights, and the hovercraft is the only vehicle that can cross bodies of water.

There is also a great deal of finesse involved with Bots. Motorcycles are fast but will send Beelzebub flying after a nudge on obstacles. Their weapon placement also means they can only fire on things directly in front of them. Walkers can rev up their motor to charge up their jump, but the engine will overheat and fizzle out if you charge for too long. Hovercrafts are versatile but have no traction. Battle tanks are, well, tanks: they're a bit too big for enclosed areas or dungeons. So are Battle Armor suits, with the extra issue of them being rather slow to move around in. The upside is that there is no limit to how far you can upgrade your Bots. While there are tons of blueprints for stronger models of Bots, there is also a wealth of weapons you can equip for your Bots, from Gatling guns to cannons to heavy shotguns and beyond. Players can even customize the paint schemes on their Bots.

While playing the preview, I explored one of the many dungeons within Sand Land; this ruin required me to ride a hovercraft to make it through, flipping switches to raise the water level to progress deeper. The puzzles were fun, but I hit a snag with a particular puzzle partway through (one of the necessary switches was a little too well hidden in the rubble of the ruin). The ruin culminated in a fight against an octopus boss, where I had to jump and swerve around tentacles while reloading ammo and taking shots.

I could also play a fun infiltration mission, where Belz and company were tasked to sneak into an enemy's castle. This required some clumsy stealth gameplay; it wasn't very obvious where the enemy guards' line of sight was. I stumbled upon a way to incapacitate roving guards by sneaking up on them (the game hadn't informed me of this ability). But it was all worth it for the opportunity to pummel my way back out of the dungeon from within a new Battle Armor, blocking tank shells with one arm while our wrist-mounted Gatling guns blazed away.

Sadly, my time with SAND LAND ran out before I could delve any further into the preview; plenty of dungeons lay unexplored, along with the Battle Arena, where Belz and friends can fight against waves of enemies for money, blueprints and weapons. What little I played laid the groundwork for a fun open-world game. A few rough spots need some polishing, but even racing around the sandy dunes in a motorcycle feels fun. Fans can also take solace that the SAND LAND game continues the story from the manga, expanding the world of SAND LAND and the mysterious worlds around it. Fans can look forward to playing SAND LAND this April 25 on PS4, PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S.