About
The game
A sandbox for people who like machines, on an island that actually exists.
Sandbox Drive is a multiplayer vehicle sandbox set on Hachijō-jima, a volcanic island 290 km south of Tokyo, rebuilt at full scale from the national elevation survey and real road maps. You can drive it, fly over it and sail around it, and eventually you'll be able to make a living hauling goods between its harbours, farms, quarries and airport.
It's a solo project. It started in December 2025 as a shooter, got distracted by gearboxes within two weeks, and has been about vehicles ever since. The one idea behind all of it is that every vehicle should behave like a machine: tyres that flex and heat up, clutches that slip, turbos that lag, rotor blades that are simulated along their length. It's a sandbox, not a racing sim. The physics underneath just happen to be quite serious.
- What
- A multiplayer vehicle sandbox. Drive, fly, sail, haul things.
- Where
- Hachijō-jima, in the Izu Islands, at 1:1 scale
- Island
- 73 km² of land in a 19 × 15 km world · Hachijō-Fuji 854 m · Mihara 701 m
- Roads
- 166 km from OpenStreetMap, growing to a 233 km designed network
- Vehicles
- 34 cars · 3 trucks · 3 helicopters · 6 planes · 2 boats
- Economy
- 25 facilities · 24 goods · jobs raised live from shortages
- Multiplayer
- Host-and-join sessions, dedicated servers, proximity voice and CB radio
- Built with
- Godot 4, plus native C++ for the heaviest physics
- Runs on
- PC. Built for Linux today.
- When
- In development. No release date, and no guessing one.
Where it stands
As of today, some of it works and some of it doesn't:
- Playable
Driving, flying and sailing
All 48 vehicles work, on the full physics model.
- Playable
The island
Terrain, roads, ocean, weather, day and night, and a volcano on Hachijō-Fuji that smokes more than the real one.
- In progress
Jobs on Hachijō
The economy runs and jobs appear. But there are no trailers to buy yet, and tankers, tippers and flatbeds can't carry anything, so about half the goods can't be hauled.
- In progress
Work sites
46 planned and about thirty with a site plan, many of them traced from the real place. None are in the world yet.
- In progress
Multiplayer on Hachijō
It works, but it's switched off on this island while half of it is being rebuilt every day.
- In progress
Clouds, AI traffic, pilot outfits
Volumetric clouds, AI drivers that steer real cars, and flight gear for the pilots. All half-built.
Credits & data
Terrain elevation and aerial imagery: Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI), used under the Public Data License 1.0. Road and place data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Sandbox Drive is not affiliated with either.