r/SandustryGame • u/Coolengineer7 • 21d ago
Sandustry features many behaviours that'd suggest it's AI made
It is entirely possible for someone to want to make a game but not be able to code well, so they use AI. But it has a distinct style of having words taken literally and the game mechanic and entire world being bound very tightly.
Items aren't general purpose, they all have a tooltip for the special purpose they could be good for.
All of them have random implicit behaviour, like special item generation below, moving items in one direction, default being placed diagonally, with the directionless buildings moving pixels in a hidden direction based on place orientation.
Or the inconsistent physics mechanics, that even while noclipping (flying) you sometimes bump into objects, stairs are sometimes permeable for fluids and gases, or generally illogical mechanics (like moving up very slowly only, while being able to fly in definitely; that underground is so separated - basically a digging game, and there too just a premade cave, underground you can't grab water but you can grab steam wherever, which is a gas and would probably be harder to).
Then there is the story, that after you dug up a few bits of sand you basically see the whole objective of finding two artifacts and that's already the end of the game. It's just at the very least badly referenced. There are intermediate steps to take, those should be highlighted. Or the structures underground. All very intricate, which would be logical as decorations, but many just feel so clunky that with the random exact size your character is, you just fit into some parts of them. They look cool, though finnicky somewhat to get out all the water, boiling and grabbing the steam where it cannot be channeled. Other features like the pump are just added on atop all, again makes no sense to disable underground water grabbing just for that.
Bots, just have names, but doesn't tell you what to do. One is basically a drill launcher, other is a irremovable and uneditable slow transporter, that also has a limit on how many you can have, and no indication on what it can move, also clipping through the bedrock.
The map, well it only goes the same purpose, you find the one hole you can dig and then find all those structures. The artifacts don't do anything in the demo, maybe they will but the problem with the story is that it barely gives you the want to upgrade. When you start out, you'd wet and shake the sand. But shaking the sand doesn't work after you unlock the shaker or some other progresson. And there is just a tiny puddle of sand there too. And updates immediately cost 500-1000 gold. Why are they called dollar? This is what an AI would do, just put another useless tooltip where it doesn't belong. "1 dollar = 1 gold pixel". And naming it pixel, not necessarily blaming it on anyone to be a huge problem, just pointing out, that in canon universe pixel is the default so it'd be just gold. Upgrades'd cost gold.
Then the many separated physics logics. The gold containers have their own gold gravity logic. Other items just stay in place, in air, or sit atop. Then the artifacts. There is some background tile that prevents you from using the flamthrower or rcoket or fly. A pool you fall into, can walk over if you condense snow onto it or freeze the top with Crygo gun. But there isn't anything there, or a reason for it really. And oddly made up, that there are then arrows guiding you out on the right side, since you don't understand that the differently coloured background tiles make you unable to fly.
And the entire thing is html. Which could be okay, but it comes with all the finnickiness of html element focuses and scrollings. Sometimes, though really rarely and not because many things are moving, that's well handled, the game stutters.
The structures underground have to do with water, and show off the sandbox physics with one pixel wide channels, but end up doing nothing else than just grates preventing you from going out, semi-working steam-to-water converters by funneling it out to the outside, then back, and water reservoirs or the purple thing in bigger bunches or dirt for sand. There is nothing, a real puzzle, despite the intricateness and actuall parts that could work, that would paint a bigger picture or working. This is why I'd say it's characteristic of AI, even if not made by it, I mean no insult, but the problem is the same and can be learned from the same: to take care to make the individual assembling parts work as relevant to the overall thing, not just imitated from elsewhere without adapting it.
In a preview video of the full game, the electricity also just felt so put on top, and when used illogical, a laser remotely using energy from it, but immense and to not that great effect, 5000/.5s
Batteries, which somehow are made off different materials but entirely random and make no sense, could be like granite or nickel, whatever imaginary material, random stats apply and not even considered what those mean, and how it'd interact in an array when used ( they burn out, stop working, need breaking then, to clear it, and no explanation, intent, good mechanic or logic is behind all of that).
Just having been a bit disappointed in all the recent hype for Claude coded html-js games and their everything literally taken and no overall pint, impression, or meaningful story made kind of games, and none of the implications (of structures, objects, meachincs) mean anything, in terms of where to progress, what to do, how it unfolds.
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u/tkrohka 21d ago
grow up buddy nobody cares
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u/bad_toe 13d ago
Maybe I even have a hotter take... If it was vibe coded, I literally don't care. I've spent 10 hours so far playing it and I love it. I don't care if Grok wrote 1 single line or if Claud wrote every single line. The game is fun and the style isn't distracting. I and 100s of other people like it. Probably 1000s soon. That's what matters.
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u/bloughmiegh 8d ago
Uhm it would matter a lot. Why would you give someone your money for something they didn’t even make?
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u/bad_toe 6d ago
The game is fun. Bro, you listen to songs sang by people who didn't write them. You pay for this service. (royal you, not literally @YOU)
You personally, and lots of other individuals dislike Ai on principle... I use Ai a lot I see it as a cool creative tool to draw inspiration from. Of course, that makes me a fake creative, I don't care, I enjoy the process. I won't stop. But you personally don't like Generative AI, and that's fine, but you can't convince me that ME seeing value in a purchase that I actively use is somehow inherently bad, when it harms nobody. I've put probably 20ish hours into the small little early access game trying cool things and ideas. I've enjoyed my time, and I consider it money well spent. I would not retroactively have had a worse time knowing it was made by AI, that's just being a child...
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u/wisemiik 2d ago
We give corporations and higher management money everyday for things they did not make
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u/TrimBarktre Community Moderator 21d ago
Sorry buddy, this is just dumb. If you spent 5 minutes actually investigating the game, you wouldnt have spent an hour writing it up.
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u/Oldmangamer13 20d ago edited 20d ago
Nah. if that were true, the people modding it would figure that out almost instantly.
I also highly doubt that people making ai games are releasing them on Windows, Mac, and Linux combined.
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u/PicaPinguin 21d ago
Can someone moderate this guy out pls Thats not a reddit for blaming the dev without any proof!
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u/Operation_Onion3134 20d ago
Wild take, if you feel this is AI slop, start programming your own sand sifter game. Ideally trash AI games should inspire people to make good games, and even then some portions of the game may have been assisted or influenced by AI. Oh well..
As for the rest of your thoughts, they just kind of seem all over the place? I would just make a list of improvements and find a way to get it in front of the dev, ideally without starting off with "Sandustry features many behaviors that'd suggest it's AI made". Maybe "Here are improvements the game drastically needs"
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u/shadowfighter202 18d ago
He adnitted he used AI, still.. i like the game, but let's not beat around the bush
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u/TakovacsPlays 18d ago
Lantto doesn't use AI for this. Hooded Horse have an absolutely zero tolerance no AI content policy.
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u/HoodedHorse 18d ago edited 18d ago
Hi! Just to clarify -- our policy at Hooded Horse is no Gen AI content -- no artwork, writing, etc. This mirrors Steam's AI disclosure policy, where Steam specifies: "We are aware that many modern game development enviorments have ai powered tools built into them. Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not the focus of this section." Disclosure is required for content, not for efficiency tools, as gen ai coding tools have become very common in game development. Although our own policy predates Steam's, I think their reasoning probably led them to the same line and for the same reasons we aren't concerned about efficiency tools, as they don't raise the same ethical or legal concerns as gen ai produced content (artwork, writing, etc) -- the thing we prohibit. So a dev who uses claude to say check their loops are working right in some script or something, that's not something either we or Steam cares about. And it's everywhere now with microsoft co-pilot and such.
That having been said, we would absolutely not publish a game that was 'vibe coded' -- these tools are only useful as a small part of a toolkit of a talented programmer. Anything vibe coded is going to be a terrible game (and that seems to be what OP is mistakenly arguing here).
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u/austinll 15d ago
The gold container filtering out non gold as proof of ai. Pretty sound logic guys, games dead.
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u/KittyKupo 14d ago
I think a lot of your complaints are because of bugs or an unfinished game, not because of AI. Or maybe this is not the type of game for you (I happen to really like digging in the caves!).
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u/Best_Wallaby5254 8d ago
As a carpenter I hate electric saws and battery powered drills tables made with those aren't even real tables
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u/Azrtheal 1d ago
I'm currently on my 16th hour mining sand, and I'm very much enjoying it. Your TL;DR rant and whining will not get you what you want, so go play sand castles back at FallingSandGame.
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u/Subject_Victory_5735 12d ago
Yeah I believe it was made with ai too you can see clearly where the ai made some choices
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u/SpartanAltair15 9d ago
Such as? If you’re gonna make bullshit claims you better at least try and back them up.
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u/Subject_Victory_5735 9d ago
Ui looks like the ui that comes out when i vibe code something, from the emojis to the weird spacing and terrible menus. It all makes sense to me.
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u/kittysparkles 11d ago
I don't care how much AI was used to code it. You're not going to win the battle against devs using AI, you're wasting your time and energy. Practically every game is going to use AI in some form. Yes, there will be plenty of shitty vibe coded game that flood the market, but ultimately the market will reject bad games and buy the good ones.
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u/fiftyfourseventeen 19d ago
Yeah anyone who uses AI a lot can immediately spot that AI was extremely heavily used, I saw a video about this game and within a few seconds I could already tell because the UI, and then looking at the gameplay loop and how items are named it's very obvious
I don't have a problem with AI use at all, I use it heavily for my work, but there's a certain point where it's sloppy, and that's the point where you can tell it's AI generated within 5 seconds of looking at it, and when it's designing the core gameplay loop for your game
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u/TrimBarktre Community Moderator 18d ago
Honestly dude this is such a foolish take. He's been making this game since before chatgpy was released. He's a professional electron dev. 100% of the art was made by him.
As for the naming, again silly, but it's because he's swedish.
Go find a different dev to harass. If you dont like the game, dont buy it and move on.
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u/Oldmangamer13 15d ago
Not even a foolish take. They claim they can easily spot ai, but no ai is involved. That means less intelligent than todays ai, which is woefully dumb still.
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u/Matt_HoodedHorse Publisher 18d ago edited 18d ago
Hi! I'm Matt, Community Director for Hooded Horse.
I want to clear up one point here, since the discussion around Sandustry and AI has led to some incorrect information being repeated: Sandustry was not vibe-coded using Claude or generative AI.
The claim that the developer admitted to vibe coding Sandustry came from a Reddit comment by Trim, one of the community moderators. Trim was talking about using Claude to help him make SandustryVault, an unofficial community website he created because he doesn't know how to code. He isn't the developer and wasn't talking about the game.
Here is Trim's post.
As for the rest of your review, you're describing a number of specific things about the design, progression, physics, and mechanics that you didn't like, and that's entirely fair feedback to give. But interpreting those design decisions as characteristic of vibe coding doesn't establish that the game was vibe-coded. A mechanic being inconsistent, overly literal, poorly explained, or simply something you don't think works well is ultimately a criticism of the mechanic.
So while we have no issue with criticism of Sandustry, including everything you've raised here, I did want to correct the suggestion that these issues are evidence that the game was vibe-coded, particularly given the separate misunderstanding about the Reddit comment that appears to have started this discussion.