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Over the last few years I have developed a real thing for games in which you cannot save. I would always like the chunky pastel slabs of wilderness that you conjure in Toca Nature, for example, but what I really love about them is that, once you're done with them for the time being, there's no option to do anything other than turn the app off in the knowledge that the trees you've been sprouting, the oceans you have carved into the earth and the mountains you have pulled from the ground, will be gone forever, a bit like that glorious sunset that never looked quite right when you tried to view it through your phone camera.This is probably a reaction to other games, I guess - games that watch their players with great attention, tracking every stat, every unlock, every quirk of every battle. I play Clash Royale and build up a fearsome collection of cards, growing in power with every coin and gem that the game banks for me. Destiny 2 begins - for players who have come from Destiny 1 - with fond reminiscences of all the things that you did in the first game. These games are always on, always recording, always saving. And that's great for them. But it's nice to step away from all that now and then and revel in the pleasures of things that you cannot retain indefinitely.
Enter Sandcastles, the latest - at least I think it's the latest - from Vectorpark. Sandcastles, as the name should probably suggest, is a game in which nothing can be saved. It is a glorious, witty, chilling hymn to impermanence. I have probably played it, on and off, more than anything else over the last few months.
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