Best Sandbox Games On Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Life

As an adult, "sandbox" either means "a game that lets you choose most of your goals" or "ant-filled nightmare that gets your child all gritty", depending on whether or not you have kids.

Sandboxes range from the no-direction-at-all end of the spectrum, like Garry's Mod (a PC-only asset toybox), through the some-direction games like Minecraft and Astroneer, all the way to games that hold your hand or guide you a lot more towards goals, like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing?

Fundamentally, though, these games will, at points, all let you roam free, doing whatever you want with the world (or your little slice of it, anyway).

Here are a selection of our favourite sandbox games (and games with sandboxy bits in them) for all of you looking for an off-the-rails experience?

There’s no story (at least not overtly) in Terraria — you’re simply a person who’s dropped in a new, strange world and tasked with surviving within it to the best of your ability.

It's difficult to describe the appeal of a game such as Minecraft.

On the surface, Minecraft seems like a simple game that one would grow bored of quickly, but the freeform nature of its gameplay structure makes it an extremely compelling experience that's tough to put down.

Though the Minecraft formula has been iterated on to hell and back, Square Enix managed to offer up an interesting take on the sandbox classic with Dragon Quest Builders, a blocky, open-ended crafting RPG.

Gameplay in Don’t Starve plays a lot like the survival mode of Minecraft, with some notable changes.

If you’ve played Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders or Don’t Starve you’ll immediately be familiar with the crafting mechanics at the heart of Crashlands.

In terms of its top-down aesthetic, and the barren landscape of its opening hours, it might appear that Crashlands has a lot in common with Klei Entertainment’s survival hit, but rather than forcing you to battle hunger and thirst you’ll spend most of your time at a far more relaxed clip, exploring the map, collecting resources and crafting new armour as you go.

You just listed some of the best games yet.

It’s more of a toy than a game but it’s an amazing toy like the imaginext batcave or the Barbie dreamhouse.

They could call it Sandbox Simulator, or just Shovelware VR.

At that point you could list any open world game as a sandbox.

Portal Knights is also Sandbox game on Switch.

There is just so much to see, do, and explore.

You can just roam for hours.

Would you recommend Portal Knights.

Animal Crossing the game I played almost 1000 hours.

Also, Nintendolife have ever reviewed Portal Knights on Switch but didn't mention that game as Sandbox game on this article.

If you don't mind with 30 fps, you can pick Portal Knights.

I have both PS4 & Switch version but recently I played PS4 version more than Switch version for having 60 fps and better environment textures?

I have accumulated more than 240 hours for Switch version?

Oh cool 240 hours seems like a fun game.

Ok the game seems like an overlooked gem and I really like the atmosphere, so I put it on my list.

I was so disappointed with how Jurassic world evolution turned out in handheld, the visuals are just extremely blurry

@blindsquarel Years before Minecraft/Roblox and the following wave of building simulators came around, sandbox was used more or less interchangeably with open world, especially with ones where the focus is more on playing with the environment over story progression

A non-open world game like Xenoblade 3 definitely shouldn't

I recently began playing it again just for "fun"

Like others in this article, it is fun just to roam around

Which version will you choose

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