The Sandbox Riddle World | 2026

💡 SIP: Ideas All Ideas
1

Hi everyone,

I’d like to propose a fun and scalable way to keep the community active, rewarded, and engaged inside The Sandbox world: The Riddle World [Game].

In the past, I’ve created riddles with large SAND prize pools, and they were buzzing with activity. With the support of the DAO, we could bring this format back as a monthly riddle challenge for everyone.

In-Game Riddles Format

  • A new riddle every month, always hosted in the same world — Riddle Land — so players know where to go, but face a fresh challenge each time.
  • Riddles mix knowledge about The Sandbox DAO, Game Maker, the platform itself, and mythology/external lore, keeping things diverse and surprising.
  • Each month carries a 10,000 SAND prize pool.
  • Rewards decrease as more players solve the riddle:
    • 1st solver: 500 SAND
    • 2nd solver: 450 SAND
    • 3rd solver: 400 SAND
    • …and so on, until the pool is empty. Than we run a new monthly riddle faucet.

Impact

  • Keeps gameplay fun and engaging without heavy development costs — riddles are built around storylines, less about super complex mechanics or very polished visuals.
  • Avoids reliance on a single repetitive game loop which gets boring.
  • Encourages exploration, discovery, and creative storytelling.
  • Strengthens the play-to-learn culture of The Sandbox

Budget

I propose 10,000 SAND per month for 12 months, totaling 120,000 SAND for a year of constant challenge.

We’ve already proven this works: in 2023, we distributed over 180,000 SAND in riddles when collaborating with Sebastien, and the engagement was really high (with lots of passion, to say the least :smiley: )

All in all, this is a low-cost, high-engagement activity that keeps players excited and coming back — especially during the long transition from the Unity-based Game Maker to Unreal, which may not fully land until late 2026 or early 2027.

One of the riddles I made back in the day: https://x.com/Riddztecia/status/1581329404923326464/video/1

Let me know what you think?

7 Likes
2

@Gikis It’s a pleasure to see one of the top builders actively cooking on new, but also proven and engaging formats for TSB platform. While we don’t know what SandboxNEXT will bring and where the journey goes from here for creators, we fully agree that it would be wrong to wait on the sidelines. I feel it’s, therefore goodidea to pivot to a format that is easier to set up but still fun and engaging for the community to participate.

The staggered prize pool based on total riddle solvers is also pretty cool, love this approach. :+1:

4 Likes
3

Thanks for the submission, @Gikis : )

Good to see you here on the forum!

Thoughts from the community on this?
@Delegates @domainallocators ?

1 Like
4

“I think this is a meaningful action. It seems like the best choice available in the current version of GameMaker. We’ll have to consider whether it will be significant for expanding the ecosystem. Do you all think this is a meaningful event for DAO or The Sandbox? This could be interpreted as an indication that things will continue in their current state until 2027.”

2 Likes
5

I love this idea!

The example riddle you shared looks engaging and full of personality, which is exactly what the community needs to stay excited and connected.

This is a low-cost, high-engagement activity that could potentially bridge the gap and keep players coming back.

Count me in for supporting this proposal!

2 Likes
6

Nice, I support! Pretty unique idea

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7

I like the idea. I have a few queries.

  1. How will the participation be executed? Will it be within your Discord group or a more open avenue?
  2. How will you verify if the players are legitimate? Are players allowed to use alt accounts to participate?
  3. Forgive me for being blunt here, but how is the DAO able to verify if the winners are actually genuine and not insiders?
  4. Lastly, not really a question but more of a suggestion, to instead have a 5k prize pool per month instead of 10k.

Thanks!

2 Likes
8

Hey! Great questions.

I already run a community on Discord, but ideally I’d love to see support from TSB in setting up an official event tab on the Events page, making it accessible to everyone

Multi-accounts are strictly forbidden, though even TSB has struggled with this issue. For Riddle World, I think it’s important to run the game in multiplayer mode and use high-scores as the first measure, track time and always use special questionaire on those who complete the challenge faster than others. Second, I always trace and look for wallet connections between players before sending out rewards.

After all, I was the one who investigated GATS for two consecutive months. I even arranged for a guy to infiltrate a Ukrainian Telegram bot group, which eventually led to GATS being banned from the Builders Challenge. So yes, I take cheating very seriously.

All good, that’s what I’d be most concerned about too. You can’t. The only insider here is myself. Everyone else is equal in my eyes. I have a community, but I don’t grant anyone special rights. None of my real-life friends or family are involved in TSB either. And last but not least, I will ask for compensation for building and maintaining these challenges, to remove any temptation to benefit myself.

Riddles are not speed-run challenges — they require time and effort. From my experience, many people won’t bother competing for just 50–100 SAND as a top prize. That’s why I believe a 10k SAND prize pool per month would attract more participants and give hope to those who take their time. Otherwise, skilled riddlers (and there are quite a few, trust me) will dominate the top spots, leaving only small rewards for everyone else, which reduces motivation.

On the other hand, some people simply enjoy the challenge of a good riddle — for them, it’s not always about the money.

All in all, I still think 10k SAND per month strikes a good balance for a challenge that would be present on ‘events’ tab at all times.

I hope this clears things up!

3 Likes
9

Solid concept. happy to support it.

3 Likes