Sands of Aura on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
Sands of Aura is an open-world action adventure with a fantasy setting of a realm in its twilight--a world buried beneath a sea of sand. Sail across the sandseas to return life to a dying world in an unforgettable experience that is equal parts engaging story and unrelenting, souls-like combat.
Sands of Aura is a action rpg, souls-like and dungeon crawler game
developed by Chashu Entertainment
and published by indie.io.
Released on October 27th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 736 reviews of which 565 were positive and 171 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.3 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 9.19€ on Steam with a 60% discount.
The Steam community has classified Sands of Aura into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel i5-4440 / AMD FX-8370
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 960 / AMD R9 285
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 22 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 11 sound device
- Additional Notes: These requirements may change during early access period.
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Loving the game so far (25 hr) seems like far off from the end story wise. I have been enjoying the difficulty (you can get way overpowered for an area) and exploration. Right off I was having trouble with some monsters and had to come back to the area later. Enjoying the little bits of world and character stories as you explore. I have a tendency to wander off the main story line if I see something in the distance to explore. The maps are creative and the combat is pretty good. Biggest annoyance I have are some camera issues where the ceiling area does not completely fade out when you are under or close to something. At one point it interfered some with a bit of platforming/jumping (non critical) to get an chest. Couple area's where to get a chest (non critical) there is some platform jumping to do. Not the games strong suit and I find these a bit difficult myself to do. Overall a very good game in my opinion. Will update when I beat it.
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If this game had a minimap, I would play the shit out of it. Its gorgeous. The controls are great. I basically like everything about it - but I am horribly directionally challenged and I cannot play a game that doesn't have a map. Unfortunate.
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Starting to think I just don't understand what gamers want anymore. This game is pretty amazing. The scope, world-building, level design and character customization are wild given a team so small that half of the minute long credits was special thanks and pets. It isn't without it's flaws, but I feel like people refuse to even consider that anything less than a 9/10 game is worth playing and could give you an immensely enjoyable time. Sands of Aura takes place in a huge open ocean of sand, dotted by the last survivors of humanity on isolated islands here and there. Something bad happened long ago to cause this, but you're just a fresh new Remnant Knight tasked with keeping the peace and such. Obviously this leads to world important events and much more. The story itself is decent, probably nothing people haven't seen before but it really sells itself on the world and the history of it which gives all the story beats weight because of how fleshed out and realized the world is. Honestly it's pretty fascinating stuff. You'll see enormous remnants of old that you literally get no explanation for and you'll wonder what in the actual heck the world was like before. I know I loved seeing these random places pop up. Combat is what most would consider a 3rd person high camera Soulslike, and I won't dismiss that comparison at all, as it has a couple trappings of the genre. But it also does it's own thing a lot of the time. There are no levels or anything, everything is based around your equipment. And every piece of equipment is customizable. Weapons have fighting styles, blade effects, pommel effects and codex effects which all can be discovered, interchanged and made up over the course of the game giving you a ton of variety in how you approach combat. I used a quick, stabbing build that dealt damage over time effects for 1v1 and bosses and a large sweeping polearm for exploring against multiple enemies that automatically cast spells. Armor comes in sets with effects for each 2 pieces you equip which are similarly widely varied and can completely change how you play. There is a ton of replayability due to the amount of options you have in how you want to approach the game. This is ignoring the spellblade abilities which can be activated for attacks, dodges and blocks separately with assigned elements that also do different things. The level design is extremely varied with a lot of exploration for many of the islands. Due to the limited size of the team, there aren't dozens of huge islands to explore but the ones that are there are hand-crafted and full of hidden paths, shortcuts, secrets and strikingly different visual designs. Personally, while some may balk at the character designs or think it's not a very good looking game, I quite enjoyed the style and refuse to hear anything negative about how gorgeously crafted the world is. Aesthetics are worlds more important than graphics. You move between islands in a sandship that reminded me a ton of Windwaker. There is an okay amount to find, but honestly the soothing surfing around while investigating far away things that catch your eye or realizing just how vast the distances are really added to the world to me. Did the giant wall that flanked the entire left side of the map have a gameplay effect or associated dungeon? No, but it sure was impressive to see and made you wonder about the world before. As said above, it's not without it's flaws. Combat can be a bit frustrating with unsure hitboxes, level layout not having clear indicators of what is a fall to a landable area and what will just kill you, long spaces between save points, etc. But I really did not care about most of it to the extent that it impacted my enjoyment. It's very obvious while playing that the devs had more planned but I guess sales weren't good enough to keep making content. Which is a real shame, because there are some areas I would've LOVED to explore or see expanded, storylines that do not have definitive endings I wanted to continue as well as seeing what islands would pop up in the underpopulated areas of the map. I thought this game was a blast. Enjoyed it beginning to end and am playing through the Hard Mode to try new builds and make choices to see how the story plays out differently. Can't recommend this game enough, quite a hidden gem.
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This game was incredibly unforgiving in the beginning. I almost asked for a refund but overtime you realize how much the weapon modification and character building are needed to advance through the game. There is an aspect to deck building your character that I really love. Before I'd by a new weapon modification or spell I would read through all the options and do a bit of math which actually made the game feel very rewarding and fun. Along with the deck building players will need to adapt to the games cruel enemy mechanics. There is no way to get better at this game other than learning how the enemies in game attack you. I found that at times dodging wasn't the move even with the iframes. There were times that sometimes I just needed to sprint attack enemies and sometimes I could only get a light hit or two off after countless rolls. The game has a beautiful and abstract scenery that just leaves you wanting to explore more. Can't recommend this game more to souls lite players.
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A recommendation but only just! This game wants to be Dark Souls I think, or recapture that magic, and it fails. It is not as well written, not as mysterious, and is sharply derivative in many places. It does not reward enough to offset its punishments. Combat is floatey and lacks punch. It relies on a lot gimmick bosses (particularly at the end) that have a schtick or two which one shots you till you figure it out. There simply aren't enough resources (without grinding anyway, and I hate undue grind) to fully build even one full suit of armour and weapon, let alone experiment or change tactics if you are stuck. There are quite a few instances of unfinished and cut content. It is quite hard to find your way around or even find what you want to look for (no minimap and the view is not zoomed out enough to properly navigate the labyrinthine environments). Shortcuts are not frequent enough or clearly signposted when you do find them. There are often not enough checkpoints which means to get back to where you died you either slowly chop your way back, or just run past everything - and if I can run past it why am I even bothering to do this properly? There is no PAUSE! I hate that. What happens if Real Life intervenes? You get splattered in game or annoy someone because you cannot stop to deal with it! I get that souls-likes often ditch pause but it is a terrible design. In many ways I finished it because I have trouble giving up on something. By the end a lot of the initial pleasure was simply gone. But... Nice art design (kind of Tim Burtonesque in places), big open world, good atmosphere, decent exploration, good music, and ok gameplay when it isn't being sadistic or clumsy... Despite my anger at a bunch of weaknesses and a general feeling of relief that is over now and I can go play something better, it is still fun, mostly, at least for two thirds of the game.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 09 April 2025 04:01 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 09 April 2025 19:48 |
| Steam price | 13 April 2025 12:26 |
| Steam reviews | 13 April 2025 05:51 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Sands of Aura, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Sands of Aura
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Sands of Aura concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Sands of Aura compatibility
Online players
5
Developer
Chashu Entertainment
Publisher
indie.io
Release
27 Oct 2023
Platforms