I played the Roman Sands Re:Build demo, and I am very confused

When I first saw the trailer for Roman Sands Re:Build, I didn’t know what was going on. I’m into its vibe, however. I like weird. I like weird when it’s flashy. Actually, I like weird all the time. But having played the demo of Roman Sands Re:Build, I am both curious and baffled.

The demo kicks off with a conversation between a few silhouettes, and the dialogue sounds like it’s pulled from Killer7. They’re talking about the sun getting bigger.

You’re then dropped on the beach in front of a surreal, upscale resort. After a quick look around, you head inside and get inundated with insults and demands from the posh clientele. The game then becomes about trying to please these people and meet their demands. However, there’s a catch. As you transfer between areas of the resort, time ticks forward. Once night hits, you are instructed to return to the beach and then… Uh, get a performance evaluation before starting the day all over again. The patrons have the same demands and don’t seem to remember you.

You’re given XP after each day, and then you can go down into the basement and spend it on some new gear, including the coveted toolkit, which allows you to address the biggest complaint of the clientele: The elevator.

Fixing the elevator treats you to a cutscene where everyone gives you big applause for doing your job. It’s nice to have some appreciation for once. Then it’s onto part 2 of Roman Sands Re:Build

The Golden Age

And then your cow’s dead. You wake up in some futuristic facility to find a dead cow in its pen. Someone who is less obnoxious than the resort’s patrons is talking to you, but honestly, they don’t seem that fond of you either. You do a small puzzle involving managing the oxygen supply in your habitat. You take the precious air from your dead cow because it isn’t using it anymore.

That’s basically it.

I’m not upset, but I’m very confused. The opening resort portion of the game kind of gives off the feeling that you’re playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater mixed with Groundhog Day. There are little seams on the floor that are like a golden path to your next task, and staying on them speeds you up. It almost feels like you’re playing the day over and over trying to get it just right — to optimize your servitude. But that doesn’t happen. You can deliver the margarita every day and eventually get the toolbox to end the session.

The other part is more conventional. The dead cow part. It’s conventional to the point where I don’t know what else to say about it.

Your cow died

So, if a demo is supposed to sell you on a game, I don’t know what to think of Roman Sands Re:Build. I don’t think it got to the point. It gave no indication of what its vision is, what gameplay is like, or what the central narrative will center around. Serving rich people at the end of the world? Frankensteining a dead cow? It’s going to flip back and forth between the two settings; that much is clear.

There’s no hook here. There’s nothing that digs into your cheek and pulls you forward. Nothing to leave you wanting more. Unless you really want to know what’s up with that dead cow.

The PR advertises it as an “adventure, visual novel, gacha, horror, simulation, and puzzle game,” and I’m only seeing three of those words depicted in the Roman Sands Re:Build demo. It’s made by the developer behind Paratopic, so there’s some pedigree behind it. It’s also a remake of a 2019 game of theirs (simply called Roman Sands), which I can find very little information on. So, maybe it’s for the fans of the original.

It’s maybe just not a game suitable for a demo. The trailers do a much better job of demonstrating its weirdness and getting you curious. The demo still manages to make me curious, but not that curious.

Roman Sands Re:Build doesn’t have a solid release date (it was supposedly coming to PC in Summer 2023), but it is coming to Switch, PC, and Xbox.