Built the first desert skirmish
Sand began as one playable map: rifle and rocket squads, a buildable base, and orbital fire over a procedural dune.
The first build was a single-player skirmish. Select a squad, move it, and shoot. Rifle infantry and rocket infantry shared a desert with a command center, barracks, and the other structures needed to replace losses.
Shots travel. Tracers, muzzle flashes, rocket trails, blasts, smoke, and craters are all on the map, and an orbital barrage can be called onto a point.
“The prototype was finished when a squad could be ordered into a fight and the fight left a mark.”
The ground is generated: dunes, scrub, and rock that units path around. Construction, power, and resource income were already part of that first loop, even while the match still opened on a prepared base.
There was no campaign and no save yet. The point of the day was a battle you could order from a command deck and watch resolve on the sand.