Great potential and forgiving early-access view
Mentioned in ~3 in 5 positive reviews
“A solid foundation with a lot of potential.”
Steam review · 1 h played ↗
Groundwork Simulator
Worth buying? What 169 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 169 Steam reviews actually say.
Mixed · 49%Mixed · 49%XYZ STUDIO2026Sandbox · Driving · Simulation
−20%$24.99$19.99
US Steam price, checked 3 h ago
The verdict
Promising early-access digging sandbox with great dirt and water physics, but rough controls, animations, joystick support and bugs. Skip it if you want polish for $20-25.
Great for
Early-access-tolerant fans of digging, terraforming and heavy machinery who like Out of Ore-style sims
Main risk
Launch-state bugs, bad controls and missing joystick support make it feel unfinished for the price
What players love
Excellent dirt and terrain physics
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews
“The Dirt mechanics are next level, compared to the likes of Out of ore”
Steam review · 1.9 h played ↗
Realistic, fun water mechanics
Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews
“Filling the pond, having the water overflowing. Diggin a trench as an overspill, etc...”
Steam review · 1.7 h played ↗
Machines feel good to operate
Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews
“the vehicles control well and feel good. compared to out of ore, the vehicles feel like they have weight.”
Steam review · 1.9 h played ↗
What players complain about
Overpriced and too rough for early access
Mentioned in ~3 in 5 negative reviews
“i could have given it a recommend but not for 25 full price. thats insane.”
Steam review · 4 h played ↗
Bad, unfinished controls and limited rebinding
Mentioned in ~1 in 2 negative reviews
“The controls are terrible, you just get confused by the keys. I remapped them, but it wasn't easy: one key is displayed while another is bound.”
Steam review · translated · 1 h played ↗
Awkward character model and animations
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“The player runs like a weird toddler with big shoes on - wtf?”
Steam review · 0.1 h played ↗
Poor performance and crashes
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“It glitches terribly, FPS drops to 14 on an RTX 4080”
Steam review · translated · 3.4 h played ↗
Joystick and controller support broken
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews
“The game shows there are no joysticks connected, even when i try to calibrate them ingame.”
Steam review · 0.4 h played ↗
Menu and tutorial bugs block progress
Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews
“got halfway through the tutorial before I tried to open the gold map, which resulted in hard locking all the menus”
Steam review · 0.8 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: Unknown10 GB
Minimum
OSWindows 10
ProcessorIntel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory16 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA GTX 1070 — 8 GB VRAM
Storage10 GB available space
Recommended
OSWindows 11
ProcessorIntel Core i5-12400 / AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Memory24 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA RTX 3060 — 8 GB / AMD RX 6600 — 8 GB
Storage10 GB available space
OSWindows 10
ProcessorIntel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory16 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA GTX 1070 — 8 GB VRAM
Storage10 GB available space
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