Best Sandbox Games on Steam
Unlike generic lists, our strategy game recommendations use a rigorous analysis of Steam user reviews to identify and feature only the best, community-validated sandbox games.
Filters & Lists
Wrench
Wrench is a mechanic simulator where players prepare and maintain race cars. The parts in Wrench are the most detailed of any game in the genre. Extreme attention has been paid to even the smallest components, including fasteners which are accurate to the thread pitch and install torque.
ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game
ATOM RPG is a post-apocalyptic indie game, inspired by classic CRPGs: Fallout, Wasteland, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate and many others.
Garden Paws
You have inherited your grandparents farm as they set off to travel the world. Work with Frank at the local construction shop to finish off the final touches on your new home. Aid Frank and Mayor Wilson in building up the town so it may reach it's full potential.
Miscreated
Miscreated is a multiplayer online hardcore survival game set in a post-apocalyptic future. You will need to survive against mutants, players, and even mother nature herself.
Bloons TD 6
The Bloons are back and better than ever! Get ready for a massive 3D tower defense game designed to give you hours and hours of the best strategy gaming available.
DayZ
How long can you survive a post-apocalyptic world? A land overrun with an infected "zombie" population, where you compete with other survivors for limited resources. Will you team up with strangers and stay strong together? Or play as a lone wolf to avoid betrayal? This is DayZ – this is your story.
Kenshi
A free-roaming squad based RPG. Focusing on open-ended sandbox gameplay features rather than a linear story. Be a trader, a thief, a rebel, a warlord, an adventurer, a farmer, a slave, or just food for the cannibals. Train your men up from puny victims to master warriors.
Just Cause 4 Reloaded
Rogue agent Rico Rodriguez journeys to Solis, a huge South American world home of conflict, oppression and extreme weather conditions. Strap into your wingsuit, equip your fully customizable grappling hook, and get ready to bring the thunder!
Simmiland
Simmiland is a god-like card game. In this game you indirectly influence a small civilization by manipulating their surroundings by playing cards 🃏🃏🃏 Playing cards on different biomes and objects will result in different findings. The way you play the game will define how mankind will develop!
X4: Foundations
Your journey to building a vast space empire begins behind the controls of a single ship. Explore the stars, trade goods, fight battles, build stations, buy and equip ships, and command fleets in a living, fully simulated universe that reacts to your decisions.
Parkitect
Parkitect is a business simulation game that charges you with the construction and management of theme parks! Bringing back the best of classic theme park games with many new features and content on top. Now supports online co-op with up to 8 players!
Equilinox
Equilinox is a relaxing nature simulation game in which you can create and nurture your own ecosystems. Shape the world to your liking, cultivate and raise hundreds of different species, and evolve your wildlife to unlock more exotic plants and animals.
Age of History II
Age of History II is a grand strategy wargame that is simple to learn yet hard to master.Your objective is to use military tactics and cunning diplomacy to either unify the world, or conquer it.Will the world bleed out or bow before you? The choice is yours..
Sunset Overdrive
Sunset Overdrive transforms an open-world apocalypse into your tactical playground. Zip, grind and wall-run across Sunset City with an unconventional arsenal. Hyper-agility, unique weapons, and customizable abilities deliver an explosive and irreverent adventure in the end times.
Wallpaper Engine
Use stunning live wallpapers on your desktop. Animate your own images to create new wallpapers or import videos/websites and share them on the Steam Workshop!
河洛群俠傳 (Ho Tu Lo Shu : The Books of Dragon)
Ho Tu Lo Shu: The Books of Dragon offers a highly freedom to play in an wuxia style open world. With realistic art style and rich character development, you can explore a vast wuxia world and create your own adventure with the company of various memorable characters.
Thief Simulator
Become the best thief. Gather intel, steal things and sell them to buy hi-tech equipment. Do everything that a real thief does.
Project Hospital
Become an ace doctor, an aspiring architect and a successful manager at the same time. Design your very own hospital, tweak every detail or choose one of the prebuilt scenarios and just jump to the doctor’s duty.
The Colonists
Build a new home for your team of robots as they begin a new life for themselves on a distant planet where they can fulfil their ultimate dream: to be human.
Star Shelter
Star shelter is a space survival game built from the ground up for VR. You are stranded in space, you must climb around in Zero-G, explore, scavenge, craft, hack and fight to survive. You have to build, arm and upgrade your own space station in order to escape the cosmic graveyard.
Farm Together
Grow your own farm all by yourself, or cooperate with your friends in this unique, relaxing farming experience!
Mashinky
Mashinky is a transport strategy game about trains. The goal is to create your own transport empire on a procedurally generated map. It’s a unique blend of realistic graphics combined with an isometric construction mode and board game-like rules.
Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution
Play with evolution! Species: ALRE is a scientifically-grounded, emergent simulation of natural selection. Creatures evolve and speciate in response to in-game mutation and selection forces, allowing you to experience and tinker with evolution in real-time.
Niffelheim
Your avatar is a brave warrior who has fallen in battle. But instead of well-deserved peace in Asgard, his soul is trapped in the harsh world of Niffelheim. Survive in this hostile world, ransack the neighbor lands, explore dangerous dungeons and find your way to Valhalla
Deity Empires
Deity Empires is a 4X, turn-based strategy game with a powerful “just one more turn” feel! Enter an intricate fantasy world as one of many deities posed to become ruler of the world.
Orion Sandbox Enhanced
This is a 2D crafting survival sandbox game. You will be able to explore a huge 2D side-view world, building houses, crafting tools, weapons and armour from the resources you collect. There is a day/night cycle and each night many dangerous monsters can be found and defeated.
Dream Car Builder
Design your car from scratch: from the frame to the suspension and race it!
The Scroll Of Taiwu
"The Scroll of Taiwu" is an indie game themed around Chinese mythology and wuxia. Players assume the role of the mysterious "heir of the Taiwu clan" in an alternate ancient China, working through generations of heirs to defeat a powerful hereditary enemy and shape the fate of the human world.
Maximum Action
MAXIMUM Action is a brutal and satisfying physics-based first person shooter influenced by Hong Kong cinema, heroic slow motion bloodshed, and old-school FPS ACTION.
Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection
The wildly popular Zoo Tycoon series gets set to crank up the excitement, challenge, and fun of building the ultimate zoo. Let your imagination run wild with Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection. Build, manage, and maintain your dream zoo alone or with up to four players.
Megaquarium
The public aquarium simulator. Design your displays, look after your fish, manage your staff and keep your guests happy! It's all in a day's work as the curator of your very own Megaquarium.