The 1950s. A young surveyor, a Land Rover and a blank sheet of paper. Cross sand, gravel and mountains to record who each village, well and tribe answers to, and draw the map yourself as you go. Every well you fix accurately is one you can find again when the water runs low.
On the survey
- Survive around the Land RoverFuel, water, spares, tyres and gifts for your hosts. Engines overheat at noon, wheels sink, and serious damage means limping home.
- Read the terrainSalt flats that crack underneath you, fast gravel plains, slow dune seas and steep mountain wadis, where the track ends and you go on by foot or donkey.
- A map you draw yourselfNo map at the start. Compass and odometer plot your route, and bearings on forts, peaks and ghaf trees fix where you really are.
- Pencil and inkWhat people tell you goes down in pencil. What you have seen with your own eyes goes down in ink. Pencil wells may not be where you think.
- Elders and the rafiqSit with elders, listen and ask carefully. To cross a tribe's land safely, you travel with a guide from that tribe.
- Contested placesWhen the evidence conflicts, you decide how a place is recorded: one ruler's, shared or disputed. Water, oil and politics follow from it.
The setting
Sand & Ink is inspired by the real boundary surveys of the 1950s, but its world is lightly fictionalised: the rulers, tribes, towns and wells in the game have invented names, and no real family's claims are mapped.
Follow along
- Bluesky · @sand-ink.com
- Amber Screen
- Steam page coming soon