Sandustry Let's Play: From Grains of Sand to Gold, and Finally Blasting the Underground with a Laser

The game begins with a tutorial. Digging soil with a shovel produces sand on the spot. You grab this sand with the "Collector" and, as instructed, drop it onto water, where the sand and water react to become "Wet Sand." Grab the wet sand and shake it, and gold and leftover residue come out of it. Putting the gold into the "Collection Tile" adds it to your funds, which you can then use to advance your research.

The first research is the "Vibrating Conveyor." Place a vibrating conveyor and a foundation block, drop wet sand on top, and it separates into gold and residue without you having to shake it by hand. This sand-shaking operation is the first thing to be automated. Next, you unlock the belt conveyor, which moves solids horizontally, and the launcher, which moves them vertically, automating transport as well, and the tutorial ends.

The main game begins with you stranded on an unfamiliar planet and tasked with mining gold. The commentator first digs the sand that serves as gold's raw material, wielding a shovel in each hand and digging ahead with momentum.

In this game, placed structures cost nothing. The commentator therefore explains that when you want to move something, you can simply fill the route with launchers, and actually lines up a huge number of launchers to secure wet sand.

The next goal is processing 4,000 grains of sand, and this is where the processing facility gets built. Since no scaffolding is needed, the factory was built in midair. Sand carried in from the right is processed on a vibrating conveyor and sorted into gold and residue. Once it's finished and launchers are connected from the ground, wet sand is carried in automatically and gold starts to accumulate. The commentator says they used filters with impurities and sand overflow in mind, designing it so that debris has a hard time getting in.

Achieving the first goal brings the factory to Level 2 and unlocks new technology. Around this time, the residue produced from sand was about to overflow. The commentator unlocked the flamethrower and burned the residue, turning it into "Cinders."

Next comes the "Drop Compressor." It's a device where you put cinders in from the top, and gold and seeds come out the bottom. This made it possible to produce gold from byproducts as well.

With the sand reserves exhausted, the commentator went to dig underground and discovered a vast subterranean space. Underground there are ruins of an ancient civilization, and solving their puzzles to obtain the relics deep inside grants benefits such as increased movement speed. After finishing the underground excavation and building the transport routes, the sand shortage settled down, but this time water started running short.

The commentator decided to aim the flamethrower at the groundwater, sending steam into the sky to make it rain on the surface. Just to be sure, they went all the way up to confirm that rain clouds had formed, and the water shortage was resolved too.

After that, the "Burning Conveyor" is introduced. If you store heat in the adjacent "Heat Storage Buffer," it automatically burns materials riding on the conveyor. Processing residue, which had been burned by hand until then, also became automatic. After waiting a while, the residue compression quota was met and the Lv3 tech tree was unlocked.

To make use of the seeds that come out of cinders, a "Planter Box" is placed. Sow wet seeds on top of the box and plants grow; burn them and you can harvest flowers. Coming over to burn them every time is a hassle, so the "Flame Jet Block" was unlocked. Like the burning conveyor, it periodically spews flames as long as heat is stored in the adjacent heat storage block.

While waiting for the flowers to be processed, the commentator resumed exploring underground and found lava. Lava is too hot to bring back as is, so they unlocked the "Freeze Gun," cooling and solidifying it with snow before bringing it back. Putting this into the residue container produced an automatic incinerator that runs without adding fire.

However, before they knew it, the flowers had become clogged. Materials that are too light are hard to move with ordinary conveyors, so a dedicated transport device called the "Clearing Frame" is used. This device was also installed in the container where seeds had been piling up. For the clogs around the planter box, an "Airflow Conveyor Fan" was placed to blow away only the petals and clear things up. After watching for a while, the goal was met and the Level 4 tech tree was unlocked.

The thing the commentator rated as especially useful was the "Advanced Filter." Since it can filter liquids too, building a layer that lets only solids through allows you to create liquid treatment tanks that solids pass through. They ran in a water supply so the water level would be maintained automatically, and installed this filter in the other treatment tanks as well. According to the commentator, things somehow feel tidier than before.

The core technologies of this stage are the "Dryer" and the "Condenser." The dryer applies steam from below to dry the flowers above. Dried flowers are light, so they get processed cleanly. Setting the dried flowers alight with a flamethrower releases a purple gas. Finally, a condenser is placed on top, and cooling from above causes the gas below to condense into a purple liquid and gold.

This cleared the next quota in one go. Since the huge pile of flowers that had been taking up space was also cleared away, the commentator tidied up the layout a bit and added a facility that processes flowers automatically.

The next tech tree unlocks batteries and drills. The purple liquid becomes usable as a battery, and the current amount of power is shown on screen. This power runs the drill, which carves away copper ore that had previously been hard to dig.

Once enough copper has been gathered, a "Smelting Furnace" is placed over lava and you wait a while. The copper on top gradually turns into liquid. Once it's all melted, this facility is no longer used. According to the commentator's explanation, this liquid stores dozens of times more power than the old batteries, providing a more efficient storage battery. Alongside it, they built a device next door that keeps a steam turbine spinning, completing the power generation facility.

Storing 100,000 units of power cleared the next quota as well. Since they'd gone to the trouble, the commentator unlocked the laser and unleashed the stored power into the underground space. They cried out as the underground got carved away, remarking, "This is fun." This is the scene referred to by "destroying the planet" in the video title.

After thoroughly enjoying some environmental destruction, the commentator moves on to the next technology. Here, the liquid from the old batteries is reused. First, its battery function is disabled to turn it back into ordinary liquid, a vibrating conveyor is placed under the container, and a fairly wide space is secured beneath that. Finally, replacing the bottom of the container with a device called the "Synthesizer" causes a mysterious rainbow-colored substance to start falling.

To use this substance, the "Aura Extractor" is unlocked. Placing the extractor gathers the mysterious substance around it, and crystals form within the extractor's field. The extractor also deploys nanobots for mining, which automatically start digging the crystals when given orders. Mining a certain amount of these crystals is the condition for the next level-up. Leaving the work to the nanobots met the mining quota, and opening the next tech tree displayed "Congratulations." This is where the Early Access content ends; the maximum level was reached and the playthrough was complete.

Looking back, the commentator says the automation mechanics are easy to use and the difficulty is kept moderate, so even beginners can get into it easily and have fun. They also note that beyond automation, the exploration elements, such as capturing creatures and upgrading tools, were appealing as well.