Dune meets Sea of Thieves meets Battlefield 1. Enough said, honestly. That’s the vibe of an upcoming first-person extraction PvPvE shooter published by Tinybuild, SAND: Raiders of Sophie. If that’s not enough to hook you, then read closely, because earlier today, developers Hologryph and TowerHaus confirmed that the official release for the game is coming up soon in March of this year and heralded its inevitable arrival with a flashy new trailer:

The description for SAND goes something like: Imagine just before WW1, the people of an offshoot of Austria-Hungary (oddly specific) must prowl the dusty wasteland of a once thriving civilization in giant steampunk walking ships to scrounge up loot and fight off other raiders. That’s a rather original concept–and one that may excite fans of turn-of-the-century alt history themed games like Hunt: Showdown or Iron Harvest. The gameplay of SAND, as hinted at earlier, is reminiscent of the full-scale pirate battles in Rare’s Sea of Thieves. You and your friends can pilot your Trampler, as it’s called, straight into another team, and board them in true scallywag fashion, except with automatic pistols instead of muskets. Or, if you prefer, you can steer your lumbering landship portside and use the mounted artillery to pummel your opposition. Oh, and it gets better. Your Trampler, which also acts as your mobile base, can be built completely from the ground-up, so you can specialize for combat, defense, or for aesthetics–who wouldn’t want to recreate Howl’s Moving Castle? The sprawling dunes that you’ll be navigating these smoke-belching beasts through are procedurally generated, according to the devs, and filled with various contract quests and POIs to tackle. This, hopefully, will add some diversity to gameplay in a genre that often relies heavily on map knowledge and meta loot-runs. SAND: Raiders of Sophie had several well-received playtests last year, so it will be interesting to see how the final product shapes up now that developers have put some more work on it after community feedback. Along with the recent release of Arc Raiders and the upcoming Marathon, extraction-shooter lovers have a lot to look forward to.