As someone that partially grew up by the seaside, I always kind of forget that there are plenty of city folk out there who just haven’t experienced the beach. It’s a tragedy! Or a blessing, depending on your tolerance for sunburns, and children covered in ice cream, and finding sand in places you didn’t even know existed for days on end. So, how about a game that allows you to have a bit of fun in the sun where all you do is build sandcastles in a physics-accurate literal sandbox called (predictably) Sandcastle?

Sandcastle is a game that very much sits in conversation with the likes of Tiny Glade, though perhaps in some ways is a tad simpler. To start at your disposal you’ll have a tiny patch of sand, and a few tools with which to mould it. You might start by building a wall, add in a few towers, perhaps add in a dash of crenelations. Over time you can unlock more, equally beachy and holiday destinationy locales in which you can play around in to your heart’s content.

Along the way you’ll also pick up starfishes and shells, the former of which nets you more customisation options, making it a bit of a hidden object game at the same time. From the sounds of it there are other objects to find too, at least some of which you can subsequently decorate your castles with. I think the thing that, outside of the cooling atmosphere the ocean waves provide, the thing i like is the physics element.

Much like how sand works in the real world, it reacts to any moisture it comes into contact with. Dry sand will be more powdery and crumbly, or denser when wet. Building your castle nearer to the shoreline will see it slowly eroded as waves lap up against its walls. “Carve too thin and a tower may slump; reinforce with damp sand and it will stand proud against the tide,” the game’s Steam page explains. It’s a kind of thoughtfulness I just love to see in games like these, elevating it from just a game to play around in to something that feels a lot more alive.

There is no release date attached to Sandcastle just yet, but a demo is coming August 6th, and you can wishlist it on Steam while you wait.