Generally, when a metroidvenia word says, my eyes start glowing and I start for a long time for the sweet release of death. Nothing is wrong with metroidvanias; I just play a lot of hell, and see a hell of much more. If you spend enough time in this location, you practically metroidvenius, especially in indie space. So when I sit to play one, I look for something more than trying super metroid and night sympony.
The siege and sandfox manage it, to find something to separate it from the metroidania’s holocaust that populate every storefront on the planet Earth. Yes, it is beautiful pixel art and a stunning soundscape, but those things are more than a dozen in the modern era. This is not a knock against siege and sandfox, but it is not what I see when I ask what is something special.
Our story begins in Kariman, a bright jewel, a city of stories in the desert. But it is impossible: an army marched in the desert to siege the city, and Sandfox, the latest in a famous line of Crown’s protector and servants, has reached the palace to provide its help to its old friend Raja. When the sandfox comes, they find that the queen has poisoned the king. She blames the murder on sandfox, takes them before the court, stabbing them in the heart with his own dagger, and throws his body into a traitor’s collapse, a deep pit that leads to Kariman’s underground jails.
The queen almost goes away with it, but somehow, sandfox survives, and firm to revenge. You spend your time in the siege and navigate the sandfox back on the surface, navigate moist caves, trusted prisons, and ruined mausoleums, left parts of the city and forgot. This is more than a simple story of revenge, as you can expect. When you drop the depth of a place, you are always going to find unexpected. But it is completed in all ways through a very compelling yarn, with the statement, what you are doing at any time and from the beginning, reminds me of a gold story. So the setting is cool, the music is amazing, and the story is conspiracy. But it is not what siege and sandfox did for me.
What is it for me that this is a secret game. You do not actually fight in siege and sandfox. If you see a guard, you hide, you run, you secret the past. If you follow them, you can exclude them with a stick, although it does not work if they are wearing a helmet. Mostly, you are trying to avoid seeing.
Sandfox can run walls, lift locks, climb on walls and ceilings, slide under low overhangs, and glide. You unlock all this by finding equipment in the world – it is a metroidavenia, after all – and opens new areas of maps of each siege and sandfox.
Hide in a box or vase as a guard passes, then extinguishes a torch and secretly extinguishes it in the past. Wait on a ladder because one walks on wooden planks on you. Be patient To be clever A fox, and you will succeed. Sometimes, enemies are very clever, or in strange places, or find you and you will not leave until you get caught, but, and, and, big, secretly focus on working, and I was grateful to play a game where my main conversation with the world was not violence. If I needed, I could keep people to sleep, but it was better if they never knew that I was there.
As you pass through the world, you will befriend different people. A man asked me to find his pet rat, and when I brought him back, he ate it in front of me. Undercutting asked me to fix an battle in an underground area to best my opponent. She asks me to discredit one of her pictures. A man losing in chance play asks me to install a mirror to help me fight back. This would be a better idea if he was not playing dice. Each conversation, while small, is unique. Every character is a step with your journey.
Crossing as a sandfox is largely a pleasure. Platforming and running weigh, but it is not heavy. Running a wall, jumping from column to column or surface to surface, and climbing are all satisfactory. If I have a complaint, it is that sometimes the siege and sandfox needs you to drop a wall down to leave a verge and go to the border to jump specific, and it is easier to walk completely from the edge and then climb it where you were from him. I wish there was a button that would just leave me from the edge and grab it instead of manually, but it is a minor grip.
I enjoyed my time with the siege of Sandfox. I loved to discover its world, solve its riddles, and learn which of my new abilities I would get where I need to go. Surprisingly, if I can climb something, I can jump, run something, find out that I can, and as a result I can search for a new world. The siege and sandfox never lose a sense of surprise as you detect it, and I appreciate that deeply. It also does not welcome it. The entire game will probably take you between 6-8 hours, until you are really in collectable, which are small stories that push the world out. You don’t need them, but I was always happy when I picked up one and learned more about Kariman and people living there. Like sandfox, this game gets inside, does its work, and goes out, and I rarely saw how long I have been playing.
It is a rare metroidvenia that feels different, knows what it wants to become and manages to pull it without feeling highly indebted to the inspired games. I enjoyed it, but most importantly, I felt as if I was playing something with my identity. Like Sandfox, it may not be here what came before it. But like sandfox, it carries forward its own way.
This review is based on a PC code provided by the publisher. The siege and sandfox were released on steam on 20 May 2025.
