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Scarab Sands will be on Kickstarter right after New Year, on January 13th 2026, brace for it!

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Scarab Sands is a highly competitive, fast paced, area control game, with simultaneous action selection and plenty of dice chucking. Simple rules, lots of strategical choices.

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Players compete as dead souls inside a pyramid, fighting to take control over sacred areas and and trying to make their hearts as light as possible.

With the resources in the pyramid, only one can make it to the Afterlife.

Nonetheless, you are dead. You will only perform actions through your scarab troops!

 

The best way to be updated is joining our newsletter at the bottom of this page, but if you prefer other means you can check the Kickstarter prelaunch page, our Discord channel, or just follow the game on Board Game Geek.

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How is the game played?

Players start the game with 7 canopic jar tokens representing the weight of their heart. The first player to get rid of all of them wins the game.

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Each round starts with determining movement for scarab troops. This happens simultaneously for all players, by using command arrows on player mats hidden by screens. Movement is resolved in turn for 1)basic units,2) flying units and 3) armored units; Therefore, moving basic units happens almost blindly, guessing the moves of the opponents, while armored troops move when most of the stage is set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After movement, combat is resolved through dice rolls in every room where two or more players' troops are present, until a single player (or none) controls it. Each room offers rewards for controlling it, such as upgrading troops or getting an obelisk die.

There are multiple ways to free a heart, such as (1) controlling the pharaoh room, (2) simultaneously owning the three obelisk dice or (3) spending Ma'at influence points (mostly gained when losing a battle).

Whenever a scarab dies in combat, heart tokens are flipped to their "larvae" side. These tokens are flipped back to hearts in the last chamber of the pyramid, spawning one basic unit for each larvae flipped. Therefore the closer a player is to victory, the less basic units they are going to be able to spawn.

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If you want more, maybe you'd rather check the latest iteration of our rulebook?

Here it is, feel free to comment as well!

Here

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