Hey all! I stayed up too late last night wrestling with configuring Windows Sandbox, so I figured I’d share what I came up with for the benefit of everyone here. I’ve checked my configuration into a repository on my personal Git server: https://git.chromaticdragon.app/kistaro/windows-sandbox-config
Windows Sandbox is a disposable virtual machine for running software that you think might mess up your real computer. Jam games are, by definition, a bunch of hastily-assembled amateur efforts, so for the ones you can’t run in a browser, I strongly recommend using some kind of VM – it’s not just about viruses (which are a real risk in game jams, to be clear; you’re running a bunch of new software from total strangers), it’s about ordinary software bugs accidentally getting a little too eager to delete files. (…something I have more experience with from my day job than I’d like to admit.)
Windows Sandbox’s default configuration is not particularly secure and, in my opinion, awkward. Windows Sandbox doesn’t have any kind of launcher or setup tool – you can configure it only by handwriting some XML-ish files with the configuration you wanted – so it’s not as friendly to use as it could be, but it is really easy to share usable configurations once someone sets one up.
So I figured I’d share mine! If you have the Pro version of Windows, please check out https://git.chromaticdragon.app/kistaro/windows-sandbox-config for a Windows Sandbox setup to run jam games safely. Its README.md includes full instructions, so you don’t have to be an experienced Windows admin to use this. Let me know if you have any questions, bug reports, improvements, etc.