THE Sandbox is 3D virtual open-world game where players can build, own, and make money from their gaming experiences.
This is one of the top games of the Metaverse, using a “play-to-earn” model to reward players.
What is The Sandbox?
The Sandbox is a community-driven multiplayer game, where users can create their own worlds and earn cryptocurrency.
It is one of the top games implementing the play-to-earn model (P2E), which allows players to create assets within the game and profit from them.
The game is made up of 166,464 parcels of land which can be purchased, resulting in a world of user-generated buildings, landscapes, objects and characters.
The Sandbox was first developed as a mobile game in 2011 under the same name, followed by The Sandbox Evolution in 2016, downloaded over 40 million times on iOS and Android.
In 2018, the developer Pixowl decided to bring the game into the blockchain ecosystem and provide players with the opportunity to own their creations as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
This opportunity, in turn, encourages players to design their own unique locations and virtual mini-games.
Although it is built originally on the Ethereum blockchain, the Sandbox announced a switch to Polygon’s Layer 2, in an effort to go greener as well as improving user experience in the metaverse by increasing speeds and reducing transaction fees.
The Sandbox is one of the most popular metaverse games – you can also read about Decentraland, Town Star, and how they compare.
How does The Sandbox work?
The world of The Sandbox is made out of voxels – pixels with three dimensional volume.
This makes it look similar to Minecraft‘s cubic graphics.
However, The Sandbox gives everyone a chance to make a game, design characters or earn SAND tokens by completing quests.
The Sandbox is available on the Google Play Store and on the App Store.
It also has a desktop version which is only supported on PC, with Mac and additional OS support announced to be coming soon.
The minimum requirements for the desktop version are a 64-bit processor, 4GB RAM and minimum Windows 7.
The first step into this creative universe is owning LAND.
Plots of LAND are a space to build games, buildings and other assets, and can be turned into profit in various ways.
You can combine several plots into an Estate, or buy into a District – an estate which belongs to several owners at once.
Owners of LAND can also lease their plots to others, making the game even more open for collaboration.
You can purchase LAND on the official website of the Sandbox, or in the secondary market such as on the OpenSea website.
SAND is the other important token in the game, used for value transfer, mortgage, and governance.
As of January 2022, the value of 1 SAND is $4.29 (£3.14).
How to earn money in The Sandbox?
As the main idea of the game is to make unique items you can sell, you have to get creative in order to make money.
If you are into art, you can create artworks and sell them on the market to earn some SAND.
If you’re more into game design, the easiest way is to create games and charge other players to play them.
Owning LAND can also bring you money – as more players invest into the game, the price of LAND increases and it can be turned into profit.
The Sandbox will also allow users to rent out their LAND to others – for example, to game designers who do not own any LAND.
You can also earn SAND by playing platform games or participating in competitions.
How to play The Sandbox?
The first thing you will need for The Sandbox is a wallet to store your SAND and virtual goods like LAND and ASSETs.
You can install a wallet as a browser extension or a smartphone app.
The Sandbox supports MetaMask, Bitski and Venly.
To begin, you will also need to invest some money into SAND and LAND, which makes the game quite expensive in the beginning.
After you log in with your wallet and purchase some real estate, you can begin buying and selling NFTs and assets.
Buying NFTs in the game is easy – you can do that by going to the in-game marketplace and selecting the object you would like to buy.
To start building and designing, you need to use one of the free tools The Sandbox provides.
VoxEdit
VoxEdit is a free 3D element modelling software, suitable for PC and Mac, that creates assets such as humans, art, tools and objects.
After the model is completed, it can be exported to the market and become an NFT game asset.
Market
The Market is a decentralised NFT marketplace of The Sandbox.
It allows users to trade their assets for profit, as well as become owners of other NFTs.
Game Maker
The Game Maker is a basic visual scripting toolbox editor used for designing games.
With its help, anyone can build a 3D game without coding.
To make the games, users need to acquire NFTs made with VoxEdit.
Players can charge others for the games they make, or sell them as assets and make profit this way.
Learning how to use these tools will give you the best chance to get creative and start making profit in no time.
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