Game Synopsis

Your small art studio is known for beautiful bottles filled with colored sand in a pleasing array of patterns. From a common workbench, each player will take actions to collect, mix, and pour colored sand. You will pour sand into your bottle, a single sheet of paper, using colored pencils to create patterns. Goal cards at the ends of the workbench display simple and difficult layers to build. Public goals describe specific shapes to create and bonuses for the most sand of a color. Fill your bottle to create a one of a kind piece of sand art and achieve the best score. 

Why We Love Sand Art

Sand Art embraces a meditative strategic yet cozy kind of fun. The novelty of creating your own artwork by coloring in your bottle sheet is satisfying, win or lose, and tells the story of your game in a way that is more fun and engaging than a score. It is easy to get caught up in a game of your own making, trying to line up a pleasing pattern to fit your goals, even if it isn’t the best way to generate points. 

Married to this artful approach to play is another force: the workbench. Its underlying mechanism is elegant, ingenious, and demands planning and thougthful play. Your hand token will move along the action spaces of the workbench. The hand can only move in one direction and once it lands,  you decide whether to take the top or bottom action of the space. Once occupied, no other hand can land where you are (except for the ends of the workbench). After moving, your hand flips direction. The workbench forces players to engage with each other despite working on an essentially solitary venture. Your plan may have to change because the space on the workbench you want is occupied. 

Rather than bog down, the game incentivizes a fast approach to filling your bottle. For each section of the bottle you fill completely, you unlock new abilities that give you greater flexibility when using the workbench. You may unlock the ability to move your hand twice, or move your hand up or down within a space, or you can choose not to flip your hand at the end of your move. You could even gain a bonus sand each time you collect.

Instead of a roll and write, Sand Art is a place and draw game. The linear action board, the workbench, is a tightly contested worker placement arena for all player’s hands. The result of most placements will involve drawing on your bottle sheet in some way. When you collect or mix sand you will mark off boxes on small colored vials on the shelves on your bottle sheet. When you pour sand, you will get to fill in dotted spaces matching the sand color building the sand up. The way the spaces are arranged gives players tons of agency to decide what shape the sand will take as long as it obeys gravity. Many connecting spaces are dot free, meaning you have the freedom to fill them or leave them open, depending on the goals you are pursuing. There will be a constant ebb and flow to this process - placing your cardboard hand to perform actions and then using your actual hands to make those actions real. 

The goals in Sand Art are so plentiful it can almost be paralyzing. There are so many tantalizing options to pursue. However, if you spread yourself too thin, trying to accomplish too many, you may find yourself failing to really capitalize on any of them. Sand Art requires a balance of the artist's mindset and the engineer’s. Try to find one or two, maybe three patterns that could overlap and help feed each other as you fill your bottle.

Given the overwhelming variety of titles available in the world of modern board games today, it is so rare to discover a game that feels like something truly new. Sand Art is just that. It combines familiar strategic elements in a challenging but chill way, allowing players to explore their own creative paths to victory or beauty and perhaps even both.

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Congratulations to designer Kory Jordan

More information on Sand Art at 25th Century Games

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