Sands of Aura Review (Switch)

While the top down and ismoteric dungeon crawling genre has been an ever present on platforms like Steam, the Switch has seen far fewer titles make it over to the platform. Of course, there is the giant of Diablo and a few games such as Moonlighter but overall it’s all Rogue-likes and Metroidvania’s that dominate the indie sales of the eshops. Sands of Aura it a solid and content filled attempt to change that.

The game is an open world adventure where most of the world is buried beneath a huge sea of sand. Players spend most of their time delving beneath the sand in dungeons, looking for ancient relics with the overall goal of restoring life to the world. The dungeons are dark and complex with well-designed layouts that wind around labyrinthine like. They are perhaps a little too dark at times though as we kept falling off the edge of things we couldn’t see.

You don’t spend the whole time in the dark though as there are numerous settlements and islands above the ground to explore as well and players can take sand ships to sail around the sand ocean looking for new areas to explore. While you do have quests, you can explore fairly freely as long as you can stay alive.

There’s a certain Dark Souls feel to the game as well. It’s certainly not as crushing as the Souls series, but the linking level designs, combat pace and the fact you drop all your money when you die certainly show the rootes winding through this. It did make us wonder what a full isometric Dark Souls game might look like.

There’s certainly a lot for players to get involved with here as well. Your inventory is detailed and upgrading is the only real way to improve weapons and armour. You don’t pick up new weapons as such, but instead different parts such as pommels or blades and then forge them together to create upgrades and imbue special qualities. This goes for armour as well and you’ll find you are always collecting things, sometimes to the point that you aren’t really sure what you hard earned junk collection is useful for.

Combat is solid as well with a good range of moves and options. You have your standard light and heavy attacks along with rolls and dodges and both a shield and parry system. Add in special attacks and spells and you’ll find there are a range of options for players to think about in how they approach the bashing of enemies.

The only real issue with the game is that it’s quite ugly to look at. Its indie routes are very much on show above ground where we had a lot of noticeable pop in and there is a real blandness to colours and textures. A lot of the time you don’t notice this as the camera stays fairly close, but when you are looking out over the sand sea or in certain positions things really show their lack of details. This isn’t a massive issue due to how engaging the game can be, but if you find yourself repeating difficult sections it can quickly become dull and doesn’t help with getting lost in the maze like levels.

Overall, Sands of Aura is an engaging and deep game that if you dig into it will keep you engaged for the hours and hours it will take you to complete it. It does take engagement from the player to get the most out of it though and you’ll need to spend a good few hours getting used to how everything works. It’s the sort of games that Souls and Diablo fans should get on well with and just accessible enough for those not so hardcore to enjoy it as well.

Overall 7/10