Portia Plays

Sandkeeper

The Sandkeeper title screen: the name poured in layers of colored sand over an evening sea, with a lighthouse on the point and a bottle, shells and a starfish on the beach.

Pour colored sand into glass bottles, one grain at a time, and keep what you make.

Wishlist on Steam

Coming Q4 2026 to Steam, for Windows and macOS

His book

Your grandfather left you a book of 48 places

Every page is a place drawn live at its own hour, with the sands it calls for and three lines in his hand. You pour a bottle for each one. Lean the bottle and the layers slope. Tap the glass and the sand settles. Drop in a shell or a pebble, cork it, and name it.

Page 15

Green Hour

The sun goes under.
For one breath the rim turns green.
Do not look away.

The green flash off Key West, with the Sand Key light beyond. Eleven evenings on the same bench. On the twelfth he saw it and did not say a word until morning.

His Green Hour, poured live in the game, sped up. Every wave is a lean of the bottle.
A bottle of white, blue and pink sand shaped like an arch, in front of the white houses and blue domes of Oia.
Blue Domes, Oia on Santorini, late in the day
A pale blue bottle with a burst of red, orange and gold at its neck, on a beach with palms at sunset.
Trade Wind, Hanalei Bay at sunset
A round bottle of green and violet sand under the northern lights, over a frozen shore.
Filament, the aurora over Tromsø
A round bottle of gold, green and orange hills of sand with two stones pressed in, over a pumpkin field under a full moon.
Harvest Moon, a pumpkin field at Half Moon Bay

His cottage

He left you his cottage, and eleven years of dust

Sweep it out, then fill it. Shelves arrive as you fill them, and every page sends something home: an oar, a paper lantern, a carved loon. Wallpaper, paint, curtains, a rug you can slide across the floor, and photographs in the frames. A gull takes to your window, and there is a mouse under the desk.

The front room as you find it: bare walls, cobwebs in the corners and dust along the floor.
The day you arrive
The same room papered in ivy, with bookcases half full of bottles and keepsakes on the walls.
A few dozen pages in
The room at night, two tall bookcases full of sand bottles and more along the window sill, the lamps lit.
At night, every shelf full

Keep them

Photograph a bottle, or send one to a friend

Any bottle can be dressed and photographed at the bench. Any bottle can also go to a friend as a code: no account, no server, nothing to sign up for. They paste the code into their game, and your bottle stands on their shelf.

The code carries only the bottle: its shape, its sand and its stickers. Never its name, and nothing about you.

The porch at sunset, with the window for sending a bottle open over the rail: four bottles to choose from.
Sending a bottle, from the porch
A photograph of the Green Hour bottle on a white instant print, propped in front of the window at the bench.
Green Hour, printed
A photograph of a round banded bottle with Saturn behind it, in a black frame at the bench.
Planet Hour, with Saturn behind it
A finished sand board of a kite in four colors against a blue sky, its tail of pink bows, on the desk beside rows of sand.
A sand board, peeled and poured

More in the house

Two more crafts, and one more room

Sand boards to peel and pour, a piece at a time. A round tray of sand to draw on with a pen, where a wheel turns any scribble into a twelve fold flower.

And the cottage has one more room to show you.

Sit down for ten minutes, or an afternoon

Sandkeeper is coming to Steam in Q4 2026. Wishlist it and Steam will tell you the day it comes out, and every wishlist helps Steam decide who else to show it to.

Wishlist on Steam