It's sort of weird that the successor to the ultimate sandbox, Garry's Mod, which is called s&box and pronounced sandbox, apparently wasn't going to have an actual sandbox mode. But the game development platform from Facepunch Studios, which was announced way back in 2017, finally has a page on Steam, and in its first news post the devs say, yes, it will indeed have a sandbox mode.
"We realise that people expect an official sandbox mode from Facepunch on the engine, and have been weary about doing that," says Facepunch in the news post. "But the more we thought about it, the more we thought about a few new features that justify making it—so we're currently working on that, and won't release s&box until that's done."
There's a bit more news if you don't like the weird "Sausage Men" models in s&box: "We're working on Human models—calm down!" Frankly, I'm fine with the Sausage Men: they're offputting but in a cute way.
What even is s&box? It's a "game engine and a platform" for devs to create their own games in Source 2. It's pretty neat to see the sorts of games people are making in s&box already: platformers, shooters, driving and combat games, and even one that looks like a fantasy RPG. Facepunch has some pretty lofty aspirations for s&box that go far beyond what it accomplished with Garry's Mod:
"Our vision for s&box isn't just a game platform, it's an engine," the dev says. "We hope to let you export the games you create in the engine to be able to sell them on Steam and other places. We are currently working with Valve to license for this. There will be no licensing fees or royalties." Facepunch also hopes games made in the engine will someday be exportable to other game platforms.
s&box is currently in "Developer Preview" meaning you can try making your own game by signing into the official site and downloading it from Steam.
