Extraction shooter Sand delayed from March as Ukrainian developer cites ‘a difficult few months’ with ‘severe power outages and air alert disruptions’

Sand: Raiders of Sophie, the PvPvE extraction shooter where you build and drive huge stompy mechanical bases around on a desert planet, “will not be releasing this March” as planned, developer Hologryph announced today.

“It’s been a difficult few months for us here in Ukraine,” the developer wrote in a Steam post, “with frequent severe power outages and air alert disruptions causing some major complications and resulting in a lot of key features that we had hoped to have finalised and implemented at this stage being behind schedule.”

A delay isn’t a huge surprise: as we approached the end of the month, fans in the official Sand Discord were getting anxious that a specific release date hadn’t been announced, with server mods being noncommittal about a release happening at all.

“We appreciate that this isn’t the news you wanted to hear but assure you that this delay is purely in the interest of delivering you all the best SAND experience possible on launch,” the developer said.

The developers listed features that still need work before launch, like improvements to PvE mobs, server physics and performance, anti-cheat, and a larger arsenal, while also saying they plan to use the extra development time to add some features based on playtest feedback.

No new release date has been announced, though the developer said it will “shortly release another development update with updates on our progress and details of a server slam we plan to hold in the interim that we hope to see many of you join us for.”