Finding the best sandbox game to play can be tough. You want something that offers just the right amount of freedom, combined with a compelling reason to keep crafting or playing. Not to be confused with – but often adjacent to – the best open world games, sandbox games offer a wide open space for your creativity to run wild, often putting you in charge of a new world, ripe for shaping. You’ll also often find elements of the best survival games embedded in these titles, as resources can be scarce and your ingenuity might be your most powerful tool.

Whether you’re looking for great immersive sandbox games on PC, or you prefer to play relaxing building games on console, this list suggests all manner of creative setups, from deep space exploration to reviving a desert town in the far future.

• Developer: Mojang Studios
• Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
• Release Date: November 18, 2011
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android

If we’re talking about the best sandbox games, it’d be ridiculous to omit the best selling game – not only in the genre, but of all time. Minecraft sets the standard for open world exploration and sandbox building potential, and makes the perfect co-op game to play with almost anyone of any age or gaming ability.

You can either take up your sword and explore the world in Survival mode, fending off enemies through the night and travelling to different biomes in the hope of uncovering new crafting recipes, or use Creative mode to let your imagination run wild with no limitations. If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve got a whole bunch of Minecraft beginner’s guides ready and waiting for your first foray into this blocky world.

• Developer: Giant Army
• Publisher: Giant Army
• Release Date: August 24, 2015
• Platforms: PC

You don’t get a much bigger sandbox than the entire universe. Universe Sandbox does exactly what you’d think – it lets you use hyper-realistic physics to create and destroy on a colossal, cosmic scale. Although it was first released in 2015, the game is still receiving regular updates introducing more features and details as the available technology improves.

In Universe Sandbox, you can play with gravity, mess with the alignment of stars, pull galaxies around, terraform whole planets, and cause mass destruction. It’s a strangely meditative experience watching a supernova kick off in real time, and with a canvas of seemingly unlimited scale, there’s very little you can’t do.

• Developer: Pathea Games
• Publisher: PM Studios/ Focus Entertainment
• Release Date: November 2, 2023
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch

While not entirely an unrestricted sandbox (there is a full story, seasons march on, and certain criteria have to be fulfilled to progress), the sheer scale of player freedom in My Time at Sandrock carves it a sturdy place on this list. As a builder, you’re tasked with bringing Sandrock to life, using an assortment of machines to create buildings, tools, furniture, and community items to make the dusty desert town beautiful and prosperous.

If you like a good chunk of creative freedom but also cherish a game with some direction, My Time at Sandrock hits a perfect balance between the two. When you’re not building and gathering resources, there are townsfolk to befriend (and romance), animals to rear, crops to plant, sidequests to conquer, and dynamic dungeon-style combat. You can even play My Time at Sandrock in 4-way multiplayer with your friends.

• Developer: Ludeon Studios/ Double Eleven
• Publisher: Ludeon Studios/ Double Eleven
• Release Date: October 17, 2018
• Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Rimworld starts with a spaceship crash and ends however you want it to end. It’s a fully-customisable story simulator where you decide how things play out, and how much you want to be involved. Introduce wild animals, diseases, famines, enemies, and threats, or leave your marooned explorers to build a colony in peace, it’s up to you.

Work your way up from wooden boxes to space flight over a number of years and scientific developments, keeping your colonists safe and fed. Design sprawling luxury dorms or restrict them to defensive bunkers, and watch as concepts like leadership, ideology, religion, and personality traits cause rifts and relationships between those that live there. Rimworld is a sandbox game of endless possibilities, and is a great place to live out all those space exploration fantasies.

• Developer: Hello Games
• Publisher: Hello Games
• Release Date: August 9, 2016
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS

The vast procedurally generated galaxies of No Man’s Sky are teeming with life and rich with potential. Our No Man’s Sky review awarded the game in its current state a 9/10, despite a troubled early launch in 2016, showing just how far it’s come since then. Endless replayability, and the ability to build and collect materials from just about anywhere makes it a stand-out game in the genre, pushing the limits of sandbox games further than ever before.

No Man’s Sky is also one of the best PSVR titles to try right now if you want your breath to be thoroughly taken away, and the Switch 2 edition launched with the console back in June 2025 to high praise, if you’re looking for a new game to add to your Switch library.

• Developer: Tuxedo Labs
• Publisher: Tuxedo Labs/ Saber Interactive
• Release Date: April 21, 2022
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Sometimes you want a sandbox that lets you build things, and sometimes you want one that lets you smash things up. Teardown presents you with map after map of completely destructible environments ripe for ruining. Through either a campaign of heist-based objectives, or in sandbox mode where chaos reigns supreme, you’ll be able to dismantle every element of every area in pretty much any way you can think of.

The campaign introduces you as a demolitions expert – something you’re sure to prove within seconds of being let loose on the armoury of tools at your disposal – and sets you up to plan elaborate heists where you break in, break out, and don’t get caught. Sounds simple enough, but with hundreds of ways to solve each map, there’s very little limit to replayability. In our Teardown review, we much preferred the sandbox mode, however, for its unrestrained access to anything from bulldozers to firearms to tear down everything in your way in one of the most creative sandbox games we’ve come across.

• Developer: Coffee Stain Studios
• Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing
• Release Date: September 10, 2024
• Platforms: PC

Satisfactory itches that bit of your brain that wants everything to be orderly and purposeful. Dropped onto an alien planet, you – as a Pioneer – must create a factory for obscure reasons owing to capitalism. Using various tools to upgrade and rearrange the factory layout into increasingly complex configurations, you’ll start to unlock new technologies as you explore this new world and exploit its resources for the good of the company.

Satisfactory can be played alongside friends or alone. You can jump into trucks, trains, jetpacks, or even hypertubes to get around and build up the fully-automated factory of your dreams.

• Developer: Myron Games
• Publisher: Myron Games
• Release Date: September 1, 2022
• Platforms: PC, Meta Quest

Deisim is one of the best sandbox games in VR, if only for the scope of its creativity. A god game in the traditional sense, you play as an unnamed deity responsible for the creation, expansion, and maintenance of a new world. While you can technically just play it on your PC, the full experience of throwing down tiles or picking up and flinging heretics off the planet really comes into its own through the right VR headset.

You can micromanage your civilization or let them carve out their own path. There’s no story mode or challenges, just a wide open space for you to simulate your own little world.

• Developer: Redbeet Interactive
• Publisher: Axolot Games
• Release Date: June 20, 2022
• Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Raft might have caught your attention while looking for games like Subnautica to play, something to throw you into perilous seas with nothing but the will to survive keeping you going. If that sounds like your cup of tea, Raft won’t disappoint. Resources are scarce, your environment is hostile, and you’re surrounded by man-eating sharks. While crafting your way out of it might be an option, it’s no easy feat.

Raft can be played online with friends or braved alone. Remnants of old civilizations lie scattered around, and as you develop your new floating home you’ll find new items to build, and tech to research. Diving, fighting, cooking, and farming are all part of life out on the open seas, but we can provide a bit of support by way of our guide to unlocking all the new characters in Raft: The Final Chapter.

• Developer: Polymorph Games
• Publisher: Polymorph Games
• Release Date: January 31, 2025
• Platforms: PC

If your usual fare is games like Animal Crossing where you can be cozy and take care of a calm environment while relaxing music plays, Foundation will be the perfect first step into sandbox games. It’s set in medieval times, with an appropriate soundtrack and artstyle to match, and lets you place buildings without a grid or any visual constraints.

The town you build can be managed, with residents given jobs and production chains established, or you can switch all that noise off and have a nice chilled time building a big castle or a quaint village without a care in the world. Either way, Foundation is a beautiful game with plenty of tiny details to enjoy. It also fully supports modding and custom gameplay settings across the board.

• Developer: Maxim Karpenko
• Publisher: Maxim Karpenko
• Release Date: December 2, 2021
• Platforms: PC, iOS, Android

One of the best modern god games on mobile and PC, WorldBox is described on its Steam page as “a petri dish for your fantasy civilization” and that pretty much sums it up. Looking at the screen during a game of WorldBox is like looking at a very colourful collection of cubist spores collecting under a microscope, with each pixel packed with potential.

There’s not a lot you can’t do in WorldBox. As the god of your own creation, you can build with terrains and resources, watch your little world grow, defend your people, colonize new islands and claim them for your own, or just wreak havoc on the inhabitants unlucky enough to call your screen their home.

• Developer: Youthcat Studio
• Publisher: Gamera Games
• Release Date: January 21, 2021
• Platforms: PC

A sprawling sci fi sandbox, Dyson Sphere Program takes you from a tiny workshop to a galaxy-spanning creation over the course of one game. There’s a good chunk of strategy in here too, including mecha battles to keep your creations safe, but the majority of gameplay is based around designing a colossal structure to orbit around a star.

The experience of scaling up is central to the game, slowly building on automation to create something bigger than most people could begin to comprehend, and exploring new worlds as you search for resources. Watching it all come together at the end is genuinely rewarding, and no two games are ever the same.