Sandustry's free demo is the reason most people have heard of the game at all: released January 31, 2025, it drew over 100,000 players and roughly 60,000 wishlists in its first months, and spawned a modding scene of 50+ community mods before the full game existed. It is still available, still free, and still the right way to try the game before buying.
Where to play it
- Steam — the demo is a separate free app (Sandustry Demo), also linked from the main store page.
- In your browser — the developer's own itch.io page runs the demo with no install. It was last synced with the Steam demo in February 2025, and some browsers currently show a black screen on load; if that happens, the Steam demo is the reliable option.
Those are the only two official sources. Any other "Sandustry free download" site is repackaging this demo — several bundle adware, which is where the "does Sandustry have malware" rumor comes from. The game itself is clean.
Demo vs. full game
The demo is frozen in time. The developer said it plainly: with focus fully on the main game, "the demo will probably not have any separate updates" — its last patch was Demo Hotfix 8 in February 2025. What you get in the demo:
| Demo | Early Access | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Paid — see the homepage data table |
| Map | One fixed, hand-made map | Larger world, procedural generation being refined |
| Updates | Frozen since Feb 2025 | Active patches (three in launch week alone) |
| Mods | Fluxloader community loader | Steam Workshop + official Sandkit API |
| Length | Around 3–6 hours to finish, by player reports | Open-ended factory building |
The demo's final hotfixes still added real features — Hard Mode, phasing through buildings (Hotfix 7), a new flower algorithm and a Hydro Sponge upgrade (Hotfix 8) — so it plays like a complete slice, not a crippled trial.
Do demo saves carry over?
No. Asked directly on the Steam forums, the developer answered that transfers "probably not" happen and don't make much sense: the demo map is fixed and lacks most of the full game's content, so there is nothing meaningful to migrate a save into. The same reply adds, with a wink, "I'm sure the modders will find a way to incorporate it into a new world generation." Until they do, plan on a fresh start — the early hours go much faster the second time anyway.
If your old demo save is broken rather than obsolete, the community maintains a save-repair guide on Steam; search the demo's guide section for "fix your demo save".
Playing together
The demo and the full game are both single-player. In Early Access, the community mod SandTogether adds up to 4-player co-op through the Steam Workshop — it does not work with the demo. If you searched "sandustry duo": that Workshop mod is currently the only way.