20 Best Sandbox Video Games

Sandbox games inspire a high degree of creativity and freedom to explore and interact with digital worlds in a nonlinear fashion. While some video games feature a predetermined story or objective, sandbox games shine in how wildly players can explore and interact with their worlds.

Gamers revel in the limitless potential for creativity in the tools given to them and the massive amount of space to engage with in a multi-faceted way. Players set their own goals and challenges, fostering a sense of personal achievement and satisfaction.

These games provide vast places where creativity and exploration take center stage. Players build, explore, and shape their adventures, creating unique challenges and stories in an open-ended way. In sandboxes, all choices remain in the hands of the gamer.

1. Minecraft

When Minecraft burst onto the scene in 2009, it redefined the concept of sandbox gaming. The game, devoid of any set objectives, empowers players with the freedom to shape their worlds as they see fit. The game world, composed of ‘blocks’ representing various materials, offers a limitless playground for players to explore, build, and create.

Minecraft generates each world procedurally, making each world virtually infinite and unique. Players can create impressive architectures with many different blocks and use Redstone materials to create functional machinery. In Survival mode, players manage their inventories and health, fighting monsters at night and in caves. In creative mode, players can fly and build to their hearts’ content. The game still gets updated to this day, offering new free content without feeling overwhelming.

2. Garry’s Mod

Taking the gaming world by storm in 2006, Garry’s Mod (Gmod) provides players with a world in which to manipulate objects freely. Essentially acting as a massive physics-based toy box and playground, gamers can spawn NPCs, ragdolls, and props. The individual limbs of ragdolls can be manipulated, and through the use of the “tool gun,” players can weld objects together and alter the facial expressions of the ragdolls.

From this sandbox game came an influx of creativity from gamers, who produced animated shorts to upload on YouTube or created entirely new game modes. Garry’s Mod includes the ability to modify the game by developing scripts, which gave way to user-created games, such as “Prop Hunt,” which found its way into popular franchises like Call of Duty and Fortnite as mini-games.

3. No Man’s Sky

Despite mixed reviews at its 2016 launch due to being released in an unfinished state, No Man’s Sky grew into one of the greatest sandbox space exploration games to date. The game captures the sense of optimistic exploration seen in science fiction novels and art through the 70s, engaging with a procedurally generated open-world universe consisting of 18 quintillion planets. Players advance in the game by mining resources, studying ecosystems with unique flora and fauna, and trading and speaking with intelligent alien life forms.

Players may find themselves stranded on planets with no life or planets made up entirely of herbivores. With the resources players gather, they can build a multitude of tools and vehicles and establish bases across star systems to create trade routes.

What makes this game most impressive lies in its complex resource and life form systems and lack of loading screens, meaning players can enter and exit atmospheres in real-time. The developers at Hello Games care deeply about the game and offer free updates and paid DLC regularly.

4. Satisfactory

Satisfactory currently exists as a fully-fleshed Early Access base-building sandbox game set on a massive alien planet. The player, a pioneer, drops onto the planet with a handful of tools, with the goal of harvesting natural resources to construct increasingly complex factories to automate resource needs. As players unlock new equipment, it becomes possible to automate more complicated tasks, eventually automating massive factories without any manual input.

Exploration and combat remain secondary to gameplay elements, acting more as resource gathering for future automation projects. Building factories from a first-person perspective remains highly immersive, as the lack of limits allows for building machinery spanning valleys or alongside mountains. Players may build machines so large they require jump pads, jetpacks, and trains to observe with satisfaction.

5. Grand Theft Auto V

The only reason this action-adventure game fits the sandbox theme lies in the technological capabilities of this installment. GTA V’s open world is far larger than ever before, and the gameplay elements outweigh the story’s brevity. In single-player mode, players control three characters with interconnecting stories, usually able to switch between them outside of missions. Free-roaming the open world gives players tons of activities in the form of mini-games or silly bits.

The best sandbox aspect of this game exists in the multiplayer mode, Grand Theft Auto Online, which still maintains a high player count. The Content Creator toolset lets players create their own games with full customization, including absurd deathmatch games on metal beams or a floating platform for playing bumper cars with monster trucks.

6. Palworld

While this game relies on its shock humor and satirical premise of emulating Pokémon “but with guns,” Palworld legitimately stands as an engaging monster-taming game with an emphasis on sandbox elements.

Players walk around the Palpagos Islands, catching Pals with “Pal Spheres” and sending them to work on automating base activities or assisting in combat. Over 100 Pals exist with special battle types and behaviors, offering nuances to managing Pal populations.

As players progress, their bases grow bigger, and NPC factions start to emerge with the intention of liberating the Pals from human control. Should players commit crimes against other humans, a wanted-level system exists to spawn troopers that attack until ended or evaded. With base building, the only limits sit within the bounds of each established base, where players can shape landscapes into mega structures.

7. Hitman (2016)

Hitman remains the best and most unique stealth video game. It consists of six episodes of an interconnected story, with each episode acting as a sandbox the player can freely explore. The amount of freedom given to players to complete objectives remains unparalleled in stealth-action games, featuring mechanics around deception and suspicion.

Players have access to explosives, pistols, assault rifles, and sniper rifles and can eliminate targets at close range with bladed weapons or unconventional items. Players can go off-track per the game’s suggestions and eliminate targets in strange ways, like planting an explosive in a toilet or setting up an electrocution trap, all while wearing a clown costume found at a birthday party.

8. Teardown

Merging puzzles with sandbox mischief, Teardown revolves around the owner of a financially stricken demolition company taking on questionable jobs like robbery or property destruction.

Teardown’s levels consist of destructible voxels with various indestructible materials and vehicles, making some structures, like gates, require an excavator to destroy. This game engages players through its voxel-based physics simulations and hilarious objectives, with every stage acting as an impressive sandbox where players complete objectives in creative or impractical ways.

Armed with a sledgehammer and fire extinguisher, players finish jobs and gain access to more tools later, including a blowtorch, shotgun, bombs, and a rocket launcher. The entire environment remains destructible and interactive, giving players ultimate freedom and driving creativity from emergent gameplay. How players finish objectives relies entirely upon them, playing as though they could brute-force or alter puzzles in any way they see fit.

9. Terraria

Merging 2D action-adventures like Metroid with an unlimited sandbox similar to Minecraft, Terraria engages players with exploration, crafting, building, and combat in magical and procedurally generated worlds. The game features an open-ended class system with a variety of enemies and bosses to slay across several layers of worlds to discover the deeper one mines.

In addition to the seemingly endless resources and items to collect, players can shape the world to their liking, crafting armor and accessories or building houses that later attract NPCs to occupy them. To this day, the developers at Re-Logic supply players with regular free updates, keeping the game alive and well with more content.

10. Scrap Mechanic

Scrap Mechanic stands proud in Early Access as an epic sandbox survival game featuring gameplay fit for both solo adventurers and parties. Players begin at the site of a crashed spaceship, urged to survive and build in the wildlife with scraps found in wreckages and ruins. With these scraps, players build machines to help automate tasks, vehicles for travel, and buildings to live in, all built brick by brick, wire by wire, ensuring full creative control over design.

In the survival mode released in 2020, players can manage farms and see more wildlife and items for cooking, including an underwater biome for any sea-faring scrappers. And once night begins, robot enemies come alive and assault player bases, causing players to repair and rebuild.

11. Astroneer

This sandbox adventure game takes place in space on alien planets where terraforming can occur. Astroneer gives players an open-ended storyline that allows them to progress at their own pace. It also gifts players with the Terrain Tool, which allows them to gather resources and reshape landscapes. Players control an astronaut who navigates on foot, by rover, spacecraft, or teleportation, uncovering resources and materials for crafting.

Aside from the Terrain Tool, the Backpack functions as the player’s inventory and HUD, featuring storage slots, a 3D printer, and the Research Catalog to keep track of blueprints to unlock new crafting items. Astroneer dives deep when it comes to crafting, with an abundance of resources to discover and landscapes to reshape.

12. Goat Simulator 3

This unconventional and satirical action-packed sandbox game reached its apex with the third installment, Goat Simulator 3. The developers at Coffee Stain North found the perfect balance between silly retro jank and a modern sandbox brimming with absurd detail. This game invites players to embrace chaos and discover what it means to be a goat with unusual abilities.

Goat Simulator 3 embraces broken physics by allowing players to manipulate their environment with headbutts and a stretchy, sticky tongue that can launch people and cars. This game features far more items than before, including jetpacks and hang-gliders, and the ability to skate and grind rails with a skateboard.

Over 18 times the size of the original map of Goat Simulator, this installment gives players a massive amount of space to “goat” around in.

13. Raft

This open-world survival sandbox game sends players into the middle of the ocean with hopes of finding the rumored “Utopia.” Raft starts players off with a 2×2 raft and a hook to throw and catch objects out of the water. From there, players collect materials to craft items and expand the raft. The only limit to expanding the raft lies in unlocking new items through crafting and learning more, giving players full control over how the raft grows.

The survival aspect of Raft forces players to manage needs like hunger and thirst by catching or growing food and purifying water to drink. Seagulls may threaten crops and can be fought off, but sharks that swarm the raft present a challenge as they eat away at the raft. This game captures the essence of flooded apocalypse themes like Waterworld and offers countless hours of fun for solo players and parties alike.

14. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord simulates medieval warfare among factions in the fictional continent of Calradia, inviting players to create and develop a character who leads soldiers, raids, and conquers a vast sandbox map. No two playthroughs will match; as players engage in politics, trade, and recruitment on an overhead campaign map, every battle gets settled with real-time combat.

During sieges, the player constructs a variety of siege engines and strategically positions them before battle, and chaos of war follows. Bannerlord features relationship mechanics when interacting with NPCs outside of battle and in their fiefdoms. Players can persuade or bribe them to do something, and the game features a marriage and family system, where if the player character dies, one of their children inherits the army and fiefs and continues on.

15. Besiege

Besiege introduces players to medieval siege engines, basing gameplay around building them and seeing how well they fare in battle and any other situation players may want to test out. With access to a polished physics engine and over 70 vehicle parts, players create catapults, tanks, helicopters, and anything else imaginable. In the latest DLC, “The Splintered Sea,” players gain access to aquatic ventures, crafting boats and skippers, avoiding the large monsters that swim beneath.

While the game offers levels that require players to fulfill puzzle-like objectives, the sandbox aspect offers deep and flexible ways to build. Besiege also offers a powerful level editing tool that allows players to create unique environments to play in and share online for multiplayer experiences.

16. The Sims 4

The Sims 4 extends the social simulation gameplay of its predecessors by adding so much content that it becomes a sandbox of many possibilities.

This installment of The Sims introduces a new game engine with improved character creation and housebuilding tools, as well as new emotion and personality systems. The complexity of each Sims character fills this game with a lot to do; although no overall game objectives exist, each Sim has needs, desires, wants, and fears that players can choose to attend.

In Build mode, players purchase furniture and appliances for Sims and construct buildings with full creative control. Players can upload and share Sims, their households, and other building designs to The Gallery, an online content exchange feature. The Sims 4 remains free to play on the Steam store and offers almost 100 paid DLC to choose from.

17. Just Cause 3

This timeless classic may appear like a campy action movie, but with hundreds of miles of complete freedom from sky to sea, Just Cause 3 offers thrills and hilarity and gives players full creative control over completing objectives. Players control the mercenary Rico Rodriguez, who arms himself with a grappling hook, wingsuit, unlimited parachutes, and an unbelievable amount of weapons.

No other action title matches the absurdities surrounding the grappling hook, as it can tether multiple objects together, like people to cars or cars to planes. The wingsuit and grapple combo allows players to soar fast and nimble. This game brings players in with its over-the-top action aesthetic and keeps them around with its amazing destruction mechanics and unhinged and free-form gameplay.

18. Dreams

Media Molecule, the creators of LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway, released this extraordinary sandbox game in 2020, giving gamers a space to create art. Dreams invites players to create video games, audiovisual experiences, and game assets, which they can share or remix for use in other creations.

Players control an “imp” that acts as a mouse cursor to interact in creating new items and characters and manipulating objects by grabbing and pulling them. After completing the tutorial on creating objects and characters, movies, and games, players gain full access to tools to create for as long as their imagination allows.

19. Valheim

Valheim features a Viking world where players must craft tools, build shelters, and fight enemies to survive. The game plays as an open-world survival sandbox, with every world procedurally generated and split into several biomes from mountains to oceans. Each biome contains unique enemies, items, and bosses, which expands players’ horizons in foraging, hunting, mining, and farming.

In addition, the game utilizes a skill-level system that stimulates players with RPG mechanics, with up to 100 levels to attain for each skill. Valheim tasks players with summoning and defeating six bosses in different biomes. Beyond this objective, players enjoy the creative freedom to develop their own Viking settlements and survive the Norse wildlife.

20. My Time at Sandrock

My Time At Sandrock combines elements of farm life sims and RPGs and sends players into an open-world sandbox. In a world destroyed by previous civilizations, this game tasks players with building up the town of Sandrock by gathering resources and farming, crafting items, and exploring the dungeons and ruins of the old world.

Out in the wilds, monsters threaten Sandrock’s safety and demand players engage in hack-and-slash combat. In addition to quests and resource gathering, players build relationships with NPCs, uncovering backstories and following interconnecting storylines. Over time, players can witness the changes in town and experience the wholesome themes this game has to offer.