Sands of the Aftermath

The world is buried under sand. You have a board and the wind.

Sands of the Aftermath is an open-world survival game where you cross endless dunes on a kite or a windsurf rig. The wind is your engine, the dunes are your ramps, and the ruins of a drowned civilisation are your salvage.

Ride

• Pick your rig at the start: the kite jumps higher and farther, the windsurf board is faster.
  
• Read the wind, launch off dune crests, grind roofs, containers and guard rails.
  
• Sand storms build on the horizon – find shelter under your kite in time.

Survive

• Water is everything: dig water holes on the shore, desalinate salt lakes, collect dew.
  
• Heat by day, cold by night. Build a fire, a shelter, a base.
  
• Pick dates, aloe and saffron, keep bees, harvest honey.

Salvage and Build

• Take apart car wrecks, containers and server racks with crowbar, wrench and angle grinder.
  
• Break into buried buildings and find what the old world left behind.
  
• Trade with Hakim, the travelling merchant who camps at a different oasis every day.

Nix

Your companion rides on your shoulder: a small robot with a lamp, a scanner and opinions. It warns of storms, explains the world – and dances when the music plays.

Early Access

The game is an early, playable alpha. Everything above is in; scope, balance and polish grow with every update. Your feedback helps decide what comes next.

Ten years of sand in my head

Ten years ago I stood on a beach with a kite in my hands, the wind nearly tearing the lines out of my fingers. On the way home we drove past a sand quarry – dunes as far as you could see, no water, nobody. All I could think was: you should be able to ride across that. With the wind. Without water.

The thought never left. It lived in notebooks, in half-finished prototypes, in folders named things like "desert_v7_final_really". Life got in the way: contracts, moves, other projects that had to ship because they paid the bills. Every time I was back at the sea, the desert came back with me: what does wind sound like breaking over a dune? What does an oasis look like when you finally find it after three days of thirst? What if the whole world is buried and only the rooftops still show?

At some point I stopped waiting for the right moment. There wasn't one. I built the board, then the wind, then the first dune. Then the second. Nix exists because I needed someone to talk to while testing at night. Hakim, because a desert without a trader is just an obstacle. The salt, the bees, the fire – all of it came from the same question: what would I actually need out there?

Sands of the Aftermath is not a studio game. It is the game I have wanted to play for ten years and that didn't exist. So I made it. Now it's here, early, with rough edges – and I want to finish it with you. Get on the board. Read the wind. And tell me where you want to go.

– sixdev

Wanted: Animator

I'm actively looking for an animator who wants to make the beta better with me – character animation for kite, windsurf, walking, climbing and the small moments in between. If you have experience with Mixamo-compatible rigs and the setting grabs you, get in touch via the Steam discussions or the website link on this page.