Sand Stories

The Tide is raising! Help Tuka build the castle and restore his island!

 Game play: Sand Stories is a vertical infinite runner for touch based platforms. The player drizzles sand to help Tuka to build a sand castle as high as you can while saving animals in go before the ocean tide takes over and destroysP layers guide the direction of the sand castle by sliding the controller at the bottom of the screen left and right. There are obstacles that the player needs to avoid like birds, clouds, wind and flying fish which will slow the player down. However, there are bouncing item bubbles that the player can pop to get abilities that will help them build higher: the lightning bolt clears the screen of obstacles, the snowflake freezes the ocean for a brief period of time, and the rainbow makes the player invincible and build faster. An achievement mode is currently in development where players can earn blocks of different shapes to stack and build their own castles in a safe space free of menacing tidal waves. They will also be able to take screenshots of their creations which can be shared online. The game feature a stop motion art style using handcrafted materials, found objects, and of course, real sand!


My co-creator, Yan Ye, and I both love the ocean and we wanted to create something that captures that beautiful feeling of a day at the ocean. We came up with the idea on a trip to the beach when we were building a sand castle. When the tide came in, we tried to keep our creation alive by continuing to build on it on top of the water. It wasn't long before it completely fell apart and destroyed our hard work, but it left us with an interesting idea for a game using the properties of sand as the main mechanic. We wanted to give the game a casual, laid back feeling with the peaceful music, rich sound effects, and bright colors while simultaneously avoiding the stereotypical cheesy tropical vibe. We want players of all ages to be able


The handcrafted stop motion style was the best way to capture all the textures that we associate with the beach like the sand, seashells, and water. We used sculpt-able moonsand for the sand blocks, gel for the water, felt for the clouds, paper cutout for the seagull along and real seashells for our buttons.