Sandy Beach is a video game developed by Frozen Codebase

Frozen Codebase

Frozen Codebase is an independent video game developer founded in 2006 by Ben Geisler. The company develops games for Microsoft's Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii and WiiWare.-Teams:...

 and published by Konami

Konami

is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...

 for the Wii

Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...

's WiiWare

WiiWare

WiiWare is a service that allows Wii users to download games and applications specifically designed and developed for the Wii video game console made by Nintendo. These games and applications can only be purchased and downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel under the WiiWare section...

 digital distribution service. It has been released in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and the PAL region.

Gameplay

Sandy Beach contains two distinct game modes: a freeform sandbox mode where the player (and a friend with a second controller) is able to build a sandcastle

SandCastle

Sandcastle is a documentation generator from Microsoft that automatically produces MSDN style reference documentation out of reflection information of .NET assemblies and XML documentation comments found in the source code of these assemblies...

 on a beach without distraction, and a tower defense

Tower defense

Tower defense is a subgenre of real-time strategy computer games.The goal of tower defense games is to try to stop enemies from crossing a map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities, costs, and ability costs...

-inspired "Crab Battle" mode where a single player must defend a sandcastle from waves of attacking crab

Crab

True crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax...

s, repairing it after each attack. The Crab Battle mode sees players using the motion controls of the Wii Remote to slap them away, while they can also place defensive walls and cannons around the castle to create further obstacles.

Reception

WiiWare World thought that Sandy Beach "looks and plays like a hastily thrown together game" and gave it a 4/10, feeling that while both modes offered something for all players, ultimately they were both unsatisfying - being too simple, lacking in replay value and suffering from "unforgivably clumsy controls". 1UP.com

1UP.com

1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....

 called it "little more than a tossed-off curiosity", citing shallow gameplay and imprecise controls, giving the game a D grade. IGN

IGN

IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...

gave it 5/10, finding the concept interesting, especially for younger players, but thought the game looked and played like a "rudimentary 3D Flash game".