Steam’s Top Picks For May Are About Sandboxes

It’s always a pleasant surprise when Steam announces the top sellers for a month. Even if they do it every month. But it’s an even nicer surprise when the theme of the month is my special wheelhouse.

The month of May is all about sandboxes. It’s a bit of a smaller themed list this time around, but it’s sandbox games. A list of just one, if the game hooks you, is enough to guarantee you dozens of hours of play.

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And if not? Well, Steam has six more choices, alongside the rest of the top sellers.

The 7 best sandbox games of May

• old world
• Keplerth
• V rising
• Hardspace: Shipbreakers
• Arma Reforge
• Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2
• My time at Sandrock

If what you crave is a Crusader Kings-style sandbox game, you should probably give old world a glance. Maybe, like me, you’ve spent thousands of hours in Rimworld and Starbound and need something new and fresh? Keplerth is there for you.

The big streamer game right now is V rising, and if you have a powerful enough PC to run it, you could do much worse. Especially if you’re looking for a bit of Diablo flavor but don’t want to get into the weeds with Diablo Immortal.

But maybe you don’t want gothic vampire games. Maybe you don’t care about all that fantastic nonsense. You are a player with demanding and realistic tastes. Maybe you want soldiers and armies, not sorcery. If so, both Arma Reforge and Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 could be the latest novelty to spice up your gaming life. Maybe you desire realism, Arma Reforger is where you should be looking. If it’s the other end of the spectrum you crave, Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 can get as clunky as you want it to be.

Or we can put all that aside. Because you’re the kind of gamer who wants to play what the writers love. Those few games that are taking the industry by storm and sticking in the minds of writers for long periods of time. Those games that, when asked, instantly come as a recommendation for things worth playing.

That, for this listing, is Hardspace: Shipbreakers. It’s one of those games that’s been around for a while. It floated around in Early Access long enough to make former GamesBeat staffer Jeff Grubb’s 10 Best of 2020 list. Now it’s finally out and worth every penny.

I’m a huge fan of most of them. But My time at Sandrock is a sequel I’ve been waiting for years. actually, I reviewed the first game on the show a few years ago, and loved it enough to put something like 200 hours into it.

Sandrock is still in Early Access, and it shows. Not all characters are developed. The main quest line sort of ends on a cliffhanger. But despite that, there’s still about 40 hours of content left, and I’ve played the hell of those 40 hours.

It’s not, technically, the same kind of game as the rest. It takes place in a sleepy desert town with an obvious lack of vegetation and problems that need to be solved.

A large sandbox.