Just build Sandcastles in Vectorpark's latest

It's grim to have sunset fall while I'm still working, so I sacked off the afternoon to cheer myself building virtual sandcastles. I build sandcastles up out the sand, I admire my little castle village, then the tide comes in and washes them all away, and I start over. That's how it goes in Sandcastles, the latest from Windosill and Metamorphabet creator Vectorpark. It's a small and pleasant thing, and it has a free version to play in your browser.

Sandcastles lets us build castles simply by clicking a spot in the sand and dragging it up, the castle rising, turning, and tilting as we do. They're made from a random selection of parts put together in different ways, so every castle is a surprise. And every castle is fleeting, seconds away from sinking as another wave rolls in. They're temporary, but that's fine. Everything is.

Perhaps you fancy classic sandcastles:

But if you buy the downloadable version, you get to play with other, fancier castles, adding more designs to the rock pool of possibilities:

Sandcastles has seven different castle themes that can be mixed-and-matched as you please. I have enjoyed trying different combinations of castles, skyscrapers, plants, and pipeblocks. Or just turn on every theme at once and see what the heck kind of castles you create:

If you dig playing with this -- and if you have a browser which still supports the Unity plugin -- you might also enjoy creating your own archipelago in Oskar Stålberg's procedural island doodad.

Sandcastles is £2.83/$2.99 on Itch for Windows and Mac. It also has a free browser version with only one of the seven castle themes.

Thanks to Philippa Warr of cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer for pointing this out. Good taste, that kid. I'm sure she'll go places.