The Siege and the Sandfox Steam Charts & Stats

Absolutely lovely gem of a little game. I've played more than my fair share of indie metroidvanias, but something about Sandfox stands out- it's one of the special ones for sure. I think a large part of it has to do with the presentation- instead of the usual silent storytelling of most of these games, there is a narrator who speaks as if they are recounting the game as some sort of bedtime story. It is warm, it is charming, it is [i]human[/i]. (Playtime is low because I played a lot on Steamdeck in offline mode so Steam hasn't properly captured all of it)

This is quite a gorgeous game, that oozes out atmosphere that I really like when it goes well, but there are some issues, some minor and some I imagine will either never come or come months from now in a big patch that focuses on QOL and feature additions. First, there is just far too much backtracking. The game has a noble task of gating off sections which really amplify your progression once you get to them. This is a tried and true metroidvania mechanic. But there are times where this joy is ruined when you want to leave that area now that you've completed and find out that leaving has no quick means, and you have to quite literally go back out the way you came in. And in a game where you rarely want to attack much less alert guards, plus some puzzle-like platforming, it can get tedious fast. This isn't the worst necessarily in theory, just "get gud" sure I get but it's compounded by the fact the game kind of barely directs you where to go. There's "quest markers" on the map as you progress, but on numerous occasions those were entirely unreachable by the means available to you or the way to break through an area you can't get to is far too obfuscated. So in the mid-game you often are just poking around at places you've already been, backtracking and trying to find out what you missed to get to the place that seemingly should have something hidden nearby to get in, but it's just not there. Additionally, I love the mechanics you find in treasure chests and unlock, but it feels like a misstep to not include SOME additional combat mechanics, and support this with enemies that challenge that increased player agency. The unlocks are 90% platforming related, which is great cuz the platforming is good, but it all kind of compounds the issues when you have to backtrack by enemies you have already "beaten" by sneaking by. The tab menu is kind of a disaster. Markers aren't really clear at all on what they mean (there's multiple lines that are colored differently that seem to denote a door or block? but they don't correlate?). There's a larger "overall" view of each section as well but this doesnt show any markers on it so its kind of pointless. Additionally there is no menu for your quests that explain what you're doing again or let you reread dialogue or quest notes. When you pick a fast travel location, the quest markers and custom markers don't show on the map, so you have to more or less memorize or remember the section's name to know where you wanted to go. I'm not gonna give this a negative, I will beat it and I do like it. I want to support this developer, but if you're looking for areas to touch up, there are some obvious QOL fixes and more unlikely ones to make this more satisfying. It's close and I hope we get more of these but fixing some of these things would go a long way in establishing "stealth metroidvanias"

This is not how you release a game. I had issues trying to launch it (it gets minimized as soon as you start it). I managed a workaround by spamming Alt+Enter while the game is launching, but then it crashes if you try to access the display settings. Fair enough, I’ll play it anyway... or so I thought. Unfortunately, the character got stuck on a platform 30 seconds into the game and I had to start over. I did, and played for a while, but then I had to close the game. When I started it back up, it loaded a previous save file and the most recent one had disappeared. It looks interesting, albeit chaotic, but it’s seriously a chore to play at the moment. Games are plenty, but time, energy and money are not, so this is a refund for me unfortunately.

As someone who loves the Prince of Persia series and is an avid consumer of indie metroidvanias, I am the target audience for this game. Unfortunately, as the target audience I have seen every part of this game done better and in more cohesive arrangements. Movement is stiff not in a way that begets a stealth game's precision but instead a faltering stutter that leads to missed pole swings and failed wallruns. Enemies have inconsistent and extremely buggy behavior, which makes navigating around them an exercise in frustration. Environments are samey corridors full of one-way passages with sparse checkpoints that are often extremely inconvenient to reach if you're ever attempting to explore off the critical path. In a game that has only stealth and platforming there needs to be a mirror shine on their polish, and it fundamentally fails at both aspects. Twisting the knife is the narration, a clear homage to the Prince's narration in The Sands of Time and the legend of Scheherazade. She's fighting for her life but the amount of fodder NPC dialogue strains her range as a narrator and most damning is the endless tutorials that are repeated constantly every single time you come across a relevant enemy or environmental object. The third-person perspective detracts from investment in The Sandfox as a character and the incessant nature quickly becomes earsplitting, especially combined with the stingy checkpoints leading to hearing the same lines over and over and over. With a lot of polish and a stern editor's hand this game isn't without promise, and it pains me to recommend strongly against a game that was clearly made with love. However in its current state it doesn't meet the mark, and has an even longer way to go to stand out among the pack.

Gameplay is solid fun. Recent Patch seems to have fixed alot of bugs.

Movement is fantastic in this game. The concept is excellent. I was sucked in on the first play and look forward to making it though to the end. I am very impressed with the quality. :-) I can see this becoming a classic!

Everyone Knows: Sandfoxes hide in Boxes. The Siege and the Sandfox has seamlessly added stealth to the Metroidvania genre. Truly following the stealth motto of "the best way to win a fight is to avoid it all together". Watching the blissfully unaware guards stroll past your hiding spot as you return to an area you've already been to with a new power up is what the last Metroidvania game I played was missing. The atmosphere of the game is superb. The various areas of Traitor's Fall feel fleshed out and distinct, all while keeping with the Arabian Nights aesthetic. The sound design and music add so much to the experience. Even just walking through an empty hall feels good. The light crackling of the torches, your soft footsteps, the tiny drops of leaking water, the scurrying of rats, it all draws you in to the experience. Not to mention the soothing narration of Amelia Tyler, of Baldur's Gate III fame. Any lover of the Metroidvania genre will find the familiar features they love, but the stealth mechanics is where the game truly shines. There's a weight to the subtle movements al'Fenak as he traverses various obstacles and performs feats of parkour. There's a smoothness to the movement that turns the various puzzles and obstacles of the terrain into satisfying peaks to climb instead of the accidental drudgery so common in the Metroidvania genre. Only 4 hours in and I'm itching for more. The looming challenge of the "remain undetected" achievement already whispers to me. Highly recommended, 10/10 atmosphere, 9/10 gameplay, well done Cardboard Sword.

I'm writing this review on 5/29/2025, with full knowledge that the game has only been out a short time and some of these concerns may be addressed in updates. As it stands right now, I don't think I could recommend it to other players, at least not without some serious caveats. The core concept of the game - a stealth-based metroidvania - is a really interesting one, and for the most part it's well-implemented. A lot of the game is really fun. That said, the enemy behavior is often kind of buggy - weird glitches around detection, movement, and sometimes even spawning position, especially with the teleporting Dustwalkers - and the controls feel too janky for how difficult some of the platforming challenges are. I can almost understand the rationale behind having a separate Crouch/Slide button instead of just assigning those actions to the usual "Down" and "Down+Jump" you'd expect to see in a Metroidvania, but it leads to situations where you'll slide to your death instead of crouching because you didn't 100% stop your forward motion before trying to crouch. Having the Glide ability not trigger if you're still holding the Jump button, on the other hand, is completely inexcusable and makes the game harder for no reason. Likewise, even jumping to full height is weirdly unreliable, which makes certain sections way more difficult than they need to be. The puzzle-like nature of many platforming sections is great, but when you fail over and over again NOT because you don't know what you're supposed to do, but because the Sandfox refuses to do what you want them to, that really kills the fun sometimes. I almost quit playing entirely in the Tower of Silence, for example. One last major critique is that with fast travel being limited to specific rooms and movement through the map essentially being one-way only in certain areas, those fast travel rooms are distributed in such a way that you will sometimes find yourself pretty far from any of them, with no choice but to slog your way through a bunch of enemies or poison flowers or whatever just to get back on track with the game. Even a limited-use item to teleport back to the last-used Cold Room would be helpful in solving this issue. Finally, the narration is fun at first, but I really don't need commentary EVERY TIME I hide in a box/vase/whatever, or every time I start an area that instantly kills the Sandfox if they don't get through it in one try. When combined with the frustrating controls, the repetitive narration gets especially annoying in those areas. In conclusion, the game has a great concept and is ALMOST really well executed, but unless the devs fix the control issues at the very least (seriously, fix the Wing Cape, OMG), I can't recommend this one. Difficulty is one thing, but it should be because the game itself is challenging, not because the character on screen doesn't reliably move the way you want them to.

Beautiful game. There was clearly a lot of love put into the art and audio. Regrettably, some of that love should have been reserved for QA. This game released in an incredibly broken state, and even after a major patch, the game still largely does not function well. Enemies regularly either get stuck or their pathing becomes confused in a way that breaks gameplay. Sometimes this means they become impassible entirely. Sometimes this means they vanish or otherwise become locked up in a way that no longer threatens the player. This happens all over the place and isn't limited to one enemy type. There are all kinds of movement glitches and weird collision sliding behaviors. I've died and fallen through the map, landing on a checkpoint nowhere near where I died and that became my new save point. I've been launched at high speeds in weird directions. I've frequently cursed a button for just not performing its function at all due to weird animation timing issues. The game, as it exists now, is also not 100%-able. You can finish the game, but you can not 100% it. One type of collectible is just bugged in my copy such that you can never interact with it. There are switches that are supposed to activate moving platforms but fail to properly trigger, leaving optional sections of the map wholly inaccessible. One of the biggest frustrations of playing this game is that you never know whether something is unreachable because you haven't figured out the puzzle, or because the puzzle is just broken. it's often just impossible to tell. Since I played too long to refund, I went through the trouble of completing as much of the game as was possible and it really just did not feel worth it in the end. The majority of the entertainment value of this experience was my friends laughing along with me at how broken it was. I have no idea why they decided to release the game in this state. Should have been early access if they needed beta testers so bad.

Ever played Mark of the Ninja? It's the same concept but with the OG Prince of Persia flair. Extremely cool game. There's also a terrific voice narrator that narrates (excuse the repetition) the hero's actions, journey and also NPC's. Unfortunately, as of right now, I cannot recommend. This game is very buggy. Upon launching it, I was unable to get this game to render on my screen until I Alt+Enter to force it back into a proper resolution. This glitch may happen to you too. Enemies' alert status will often glitch, sometimes leading them to get stuck in a fixed position until you purposefuly get caught, or knock them down (if you can). I've had them repeat their alert message over and over, leading to some chaotic audio artifacts. Button prompts also display incorrect controller icons. Playing with a Dualshock controller with PS icons, I would often get reverted back to Xbox icons randomly. No idea what causes this. I still give it a thumbs up to help out the devs, but be warned, you are embarking into a buggy journey. Edit : 5 hours in, two weeks later, the game now launches as a black screen on the wrong monitor everytime I boot, requiring to switch it back in the options. The game is still bugged and the enemy behavior still glitches, requiring frequent load to the last checkpoint. It's still not in a good enough state.