What an honour it is to Akira Toriyama’s legacy that Sand Land is releasing just after his unfortunate passing. The man – creator of Dragon Ball, lead artist on Chrono Trigger, and so much more – always revelled in the joy of innocence, always pushed ideas of naivety and pure-heartedness in his works. Sand Land, a game adapted directly from one of his most under-represented original stories, is a fitting epitaph to the man and his view of the world. I wish I had a game like this when I was growing up.
The RPG follows a mischievous demon imp with a begrudgingly pure heart, a crotchety old man that masks his just nature with gruff sternness, and a comic relief codger that likes to dress as Santa Claus. The three of them are quickly embroiled in a conspiracy that involves much of the world’s natural water – hoarded as it is by an autocratic king, a picture of greed himself.
It’s somehow both predictable and fresh, but the detail and depth of the human heart beating at the middle of this intra-species story is something you’d expect to find in a Pixar film or Becky Chambers book.
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