Sandustry Mods

Steam Workshop — the route for the Steam release

Sandustry ships with Workshop support, so installing a mod is a subscribe button. No loader, no file copying, no third-party downloads.

There is one step the game does not mention:

To access Steam Workshop modding in Early Access, switch to the Mods branch in Steam. Right-click Sandustry in your Steam Library, select Properties, go to Game Versions & Betas, then choose the appropriate branch.

And the developer’s warning that came with it on 19 August: “This branch is unstable and not up to date yet, so do not use it if you only want to play vanilla.” If the Workshop still does not appear after switching, the FAQ says to restart Steam. Which loader you need covers the trade in full.

Since 28 August 2026 there are two of these branches, not one. The developer moved the updated modding framework to a new 0.5.5 experimental branch, published a rewritten API document at sandustry.com/sandkit.html, and kept a 0.5.2 branch for mods that have not caught up: “The mods branch will stay on 0.5.2 until modders have had some time to update their mods.” His own caveat is that modding support is “still very much work in progress” and the API is not stable yet — so before you switch, check which branch the mod you want was built for.

That wait was short. The v0.5.6 notes on 3 September say the mods branch “is now on 0.5.6 as well”, level with the game at the time, and add new hooks for modders such as building:removing and meltAtCell, documented in the same sandkit file. The v0.5.7 notes on 14 September say nothing about the mods branch, so nothing official puts it on 0.5.7.

None of that reaches the Game Pass build, which has no Steam library entry and no Workshop. What modding that copy supports, if any, is not documented anywhere we could find.

The Workshop went live with the game, and by the developer’s own count on 28 August 2026 it had passed 125 mods — “I really did not expect the modding scene to go this hard this fast.” A sample of what is there:

Mod	By	What it does
Multiple Action Bars	ZyniX	More hotbars on screen at once
Flow Meter	uolkx	Throughput readouts for your lines
Power Monitor	uolkx	Watch energy generation and draw
Mod Inspector	uolkx	See what your installed mods are doing
Steam Pipes	Kingcub	Pipe steam around
Vertical Conveyor Portal	Kingcub	Vertical version of the conveyor portal
Ultrawide Hor+	SuperMan4eg	Proper ultrawide support

How much of that list is instrumentation is telling — flow meters, power monitors, inspectors. That is what players reach for once a factory outgrows eyeballing it, and it maps neatly onto where the base game currently leaves a gap.

One of the Workshop items, Drill Test, is published by lantto — the developer. Modding here is not merely tolerated.

Fluxloader — the community loader, for the demo

Fluxloader is a separate, unofficial mod loader with its own browser and a catalogue well past a hundred mods. It is not affiliated with Lantto Games or Hooded Horse.

It attaches only to a demo install — it goes looking for one and stops when it cannot find it, and everything built on top of it inherits that. So the catalogue below is what a demo player can reach, not a second option for a bought copy.

• Current version: 2.5.5, published on the project’s GitHub releases page
• Download it from GitHub or the project site — nowhere else
• Mods declare versioned dependencies, so most of them also pull in Core Lib (currently 3.1.3), maintained by the Fluxloader team

What it has that the Workshop does not, at least so far, is breadth: custom maps, player skins, texture packs, quality-of-life patches, speedrunning timers, and an experimental multiplayer mod.

Notable entries:

Mod	Version	What it is
Core Lib	3.1.3	The dependency almost everything else needs
Custom Map Loader	4.1.6	Loads community maps
Texture Pack Loader	2.2.1	Loads texture packs
Skin Loader	2.0.1	Loads player skins
Some QoL	0.5.11	Assorted quality-of-life fixes
Creative Mode	1.1.3	Unlimited building
Sandustry Together	0.5.0	Experimental online co-op

Sandustry Together, and reading a version number

Online co-op exists, in the sense that a 0.5.0 experimental mod exists. Its own author is blunt about the state of it: expect bugs, desyncs and crashes, and Community“I can’t guarantee no corruption of saves”.

That is the right way to read every version number on this page. A 4.1.6 loader has been through a lot of releases; a 0.5.0 multiplayer mod rewrites how your world is saved and has not. Back up before you install either, and especially the second.

Custom maps

Custom maps are the biggest thing Fluxloader offers that the Workshop does not, and they are the reason most people install it — on the demo, which is the only place either half of that works.

You need the Custom Map Loader (4.1.6, by Electric131), and then any of the maps in the catalogue — there are dozens, spanning full terrain overhauls, puzzle layouts, and challenge maps like InfiniMines, Volcanic Sands and Procedural Challenge.

Maps are ordinary Fluxloader mods, so they install the same way and declare the same dependencies. A map that will not load is nearly always a Core Lib version mismatch rather than a broken map.

We do not host map files, and we never will. Everything above points at the Workshop, at Fluxloader, or at a creator’s own page.

After every patch

Sandustry is in Early Access and patching often. Mods are the first thing to break when the game underneath them changes.

• After any update, check your mods before you blame the game. A crash that started right after a patch, on a modded save, is a mod incompatibility until proven otherwise.
• Back up your saves before updating. Copy %APPDATA%\sandustry\saves somewhere safe — see where Sandustry saves your game.
• Test with mods disabled before reporting a bug. The developers cannot debug someone else’s mod, and a report from a modded save usually ends there.
• Treat anything outside the Workshop as an ordinary download. Know who made it, and keep a backup you are willing to lose.

Related

• Sandustry Official Discord — where modding conversation happens
• Crash and FPS fixes — rule mods out first
• Where Sandustry saves your game — back up before you experiment