The Story Behind the Creation of the Shrine of Truth and more — Creators’ Interview #12: Sand Rush
Welcome to our Game Creators interview series, where we feature creators and members of The Sandbox community, giving them a platform to share their stories.
In this edition of Game Creators, we speak with Sand Rush, a group of artists that met within The Sandbox’s Discord server and teamed up to become a big sensation in the Metaverse. Read about their collaborative creation, The Shrine of Truth, that was sold to the CyberKongz team for a whopping 100,000 $SAND and discover more about their universe!
Tell us a bit about the team
Do you believe in the butterfly effect? Sometimes in life, a tiny decision can have huge results. The Sand Rush team is a perfect example of this. As it turns out, if a group of creative people get together, creative things happen! It started with a few 👍(thumbs up) emojis in Discord, and gradually evolved into a group of artists with a common goal. Next, we were writing a game design document together to see what happens. Now, the Sand Rush team consists of a dozen people from around the globe! (Shout out to the team below). Originally we met while working as voxel artists for The Sandbox Creators Fund. One thing led to another, and soon we are all submersed into the metaverse. We couldn’t be more excited. We are proud to be a part of emerging technologies, and surrounded by like-minded people from around the globe.
How did you first hear about The Sandbox?
Most of our team has been working with the Sandbox Creator Fund since early 2020, and have all stumbled across the Sandbox metaverse in different ways. I personally came across The Sandbox while exploring free lance work as a voxel artist. Turns out The Sandbox has a Creator Fund grant, and had a demand for voxel artists. From there, our conversations started to gain momentum and now here we all are!
How did you come up with your first game idea?
Our first game has gone through several stages of evolution. In fact, at first we had plans to build a theme park type experience! Soon our conversations evolved into talks about a giant legendary tree called the “Tree of a Thousand Lights”. This tree is designed to be an attraction, a landmark and a beacon of hope in the crumbling world around it. If you choose to visit this legendary tree, you must start off on a journey. This journey will have many of its own adventures along the way. This is when we started to plan out our first Sandbox based game “Jungle Rush”.
What is the story behind Jungle Rush?
When you first enter “Jungle Rush”, you immediately know you are entering a place of old magic, mystery, and lore. It doesn’t take you long to become consumed by the jungle, and get lost in its beauty. But beware, ancient technologies lurk in the shadows, and they don’t look very friendly.
Long ago, when humans were in the process of evacuating their second earth, they found themselves with an over abundance of machinery. Due to cargo restrictions these machines were cast aside,and left for rust. It started with older model robots being airdropped deep into the jungle, and quickly evolved into an heap of so called “scrap” scattered across the land.
No one is exactly sure how long robots take to evolve. What we do know, is that over time these machines have gained the ability to repair themselves, and they have not forgotten how the humans left them for waste.
Robots are not the only thing you will encounter in Jungle Rush! Prepare to forge through jungle terrain, explore daunting cliffs, and discover the land of the Anuran tribe!
How did Light Trail Adventures and Sand Rush meet and what decided you to join forces to build an experience?
You never know who you will meet in the Sandbox metaverse. Light Trail Adventures noticed our LANDs were close to each other in The Sandbox Metaverse and reached out to us. Through talking we discovered that both our teams strive for high quality content, and maintain similar fundamentals. We invited them to brainstorm together with us on Discord. Our conversations were fun and productive so we decided to go full force on creating a truly unique NFT together.
Tell us a bit more about Shrine of Truth
At the start of this project, we were introduced to another team of artists from Light Trail Adventures. After a brief introduction with both teams, we knew we had something special to offer as a cohesive unit. We began to feel the excitement that comes with starting something new and unique. Both teams agreed we needed to make something EPIC. After some brainstorming, it became obvious that we should manufacture a giant shrine that could be used as a centerpiece on a LAND. Since this is a collaborative piece, one of our goals was to make sure elements from both SAND RUSH, and LIGHT TRAIL ADVENTURES were included in the final version.
How was your experience with the Game Maker?
If it wasn’t for the Game Maker and Voxedit, this project could not exist. It has been fun to watch things gradually improve over time. The Game Maker is powerful, and easy to use. With each update, more impressive features are released. The Sandbox team is responsive to suggestions, and ideas we have had. VoxEdit has evolved from its early stages, into a powerful voxel editing software, and animation program. Creative concepts have been implemented with updates over time, and we can’t wait to see what will happen in the future.
What do you enjoy most about these projects? And what did you find challenging?
The Sand Rush team has been exploring the limits of The Sandbox since pre-release. It turns out that the most enjoyable part of this experience has been the people involved. Growing together as artists, and pushing each other to their limits, has been a once in a lifetime experience. Working through challenges together, and solving problems has created valuable life skills for everyone. Being a collection of artists from around the globe has its own challenges, but we have been able to make it happen. Working with staff from The Sandbox has been a true blessing, and we are excited to have been invited to be part of their metaverse!
When can we expect to see more content from Sand Rush?
We are working as a team every day on this project, and frequently update social media with screenshots, gifs, videos, teasers, and information about development. Soon, you can expect to see an NFT drop from us! We would love for you to check out our project, and the people involved. We would like to give a shout out to the team: Pepe Hiller, Necrobombicon, Sisapi, Nest, 5LQD, momo22_ph, CyberDragon, and Pandapops. A special thanks to Ven, KradSuperSoldier, Diegus and Gatostao. Thank you for joining us in this adventure!
Any words for aspiring creators?
Do not be afraid of failure, be afraid of not trying. Hard work, and dedication will always produce improvement. Many times in life, our problems can be approached like a voxel model, one tiny piece at a time.
We thank the Sand Rush team for their inspiring words. You can discover more about their universe and show support to their creations by giving them a follow on their social medias listed below:
