My Time at Sandrock

My Time at Sandrock, so much time that sand is now stuck where it never should stick.

I’ve played My Time at Portia, though I regrettably haven’t finished it as of writing this, and knowing how good of a game that was, I also wanted to play at Sandrock. In fact, I hope they make games for every location that’s mentioned in these games. And while I’ve played some of the early access for Sandrock, I kind of wanted to wait until it was fully released.

And now, it’s fully released.

Time to play some Sandstorm while dealing with sandstorms.

Developed by Pathea Games
Published by Pathea Games, Focus Entertainment, PM Studios, Inc., DMM Games

Available on Amazon
Available on Humble Bundle

Who is this game for?

Achievement hunters

Game length

50+ hours

Genres

Simulation

Explanation to Negative Feedback

Bugs

Not the insects, but there are a good chunk of bugs in the game, which the devs are trying their best to smooth out.

But there have been a lot of moments where a cutscene was supposed to happen–such as when you first meet Fang–and it was just a black screen and silence throughout the entire cutscene. This happened a couple more times in different areas.

And if it wasn’t a cutscene that was getting chopped out, it was scene transitions that would just sit on a black screen for so long I either had to stop the game and restart it, or I just had to continue to wait until the game decided to come back to life.

Normally I don’t mind bugs, but when they stunt the actual gameplay, they become a problem.

Combat is clunky

It was never meant to be a combat-heavy game, with combat kind of taking a back seat in the sense that you only need to fight enemies if you need something they drop to craft something else, while everything else kind of took priority. But the combat can be worked on a bit–especially with moments where you’re on uneven ground with the opponent and your swings just never connect.

Just because you’re locked onto a target doesn’t mean your character is intuitive enough to get on their level to get some hits in.

Different character voices

I’m going to say some of the characters are like this, but especially Mort. If you listen to him have a conversation with you and then listen to his one-liners, they’re two completely different voices. I don’t know if they changed what they wanted his voice to be like or if they switched voice actors, but…it’s a bit jarring.

Explanation to Positive Feedback

House customization

So this is a bit interesting, as there’s a way you can actually customize the outside of your house to have it designed the way you want it to be designed, structure-wise. Which means nobody’s house ever looks the same unless you stick with the starting design–something I don’t really recommend long-term.

Aside from the outside, you can also customize the inside of your home, buying different decorations or even crafting them and sticking them in specific rooms that might cater to a theme.

It was a bit weird at first and I wasn’t too fond of the array of options, but it’s pretty fun once you get into at a later point.

So many items

Honestly, I don’t know if this is a pro or a con, but man there’s a lot of things you can gather or obtain or craft in this game, and not only that, but materials can be upgraded to higher qualities with a stat on them if you so choose–such as your weapons or gear.

But a lot of items also means you’re going to need a lot of space, which means buying inventory slots or acquiring large storage bins. The largest you can get come from the wandering merchant that comes at the 20th of every month and they’re pretty expensive when you’re just starting out, but they’re so worth it as you progress because…damn.

So.

Many.

Items.

I suppose I’ve placed it in the pros because you have plenty to sell and plenty to craft and decorate your home with.

Wide range of characters

From old man Mort in the graveyard to the blabberin’ country-man Cooper, this game has a host of characters that I’ve actually come to enjoy over the time of playing the game. The VAs have done an amazing job with all of them and you can definitely tell that they had a lot of fun while saying the voice lines.

Especially Pen.

Oh, Pen…

Links Worth Checking Out

Nothing here

My Time at Sandrock Review

All right, before we begin the gameplay, we must first create our character.

Man I love custom character creations, especially when you have a lot of options to choose from, and this game gives you quite the variety.

At the start, we can choose our name, gender–male or female–and then four different vocal ranges for either the male or the female. If you don’t want your character to have a voice, you can choose to go without one as well.

The next character creation section allows you to fiddle around with a variety of your character’s appearances. Thirteen options to tweak to your visual delight, in fact. And if you don’t want to spend a ton of time going through this process, you can randomize the appearance, although every randomized character for me looked hella frightening and I couldn’t deal with any of them.

I ended up making a character that looks like Pikachu, because who doesn’t love Pikachu?

_{(I’m not really a fan, but shut up.)}

Now when it came to My Time at Portia we arrived by boat, but in My Time at Sandrock, we arrive by train, which having ridden on a train across some states is cooler than a boat.

That might be my thalassophobia speaking, though.

Unlike with most farming simulator type of games, this little workshop area did not come from an estranged father or deceased grandfather. Instead, it just so happens that one of the builders, Mason, is retiring from being a builder in this little town. And let me tell you, Mason is a man no longer interested in staying at this place, as he so kindly tells you to not try to become buddies with him as he won’t be staying much longer.

Got it.

And judging by the looks of his little builder area and the fact that he’s so well-known after being here a while…it’s safe to say that he never worked nearly as hard in a year as we’re going to work in a single week.

We’re also not tormented by a rival builder like we were in My Time at Portia. Instead, a second builder, Mi-an, has joined us in moving to Portia and she’s actually going to become our friend. God, that’s such a relief from dealing with Higgins and his arrogant attitude. I knew he hated my ass when I got top builder status in the first year.

The first person to introduce you to Sandrock is Yan, who’s kind of your rival, but he’s super lazy despite having topped first slot as the number one builder to go to.

Seriously. He never does anything. He’s always at the commission building with his feet propped up on the desk. How the hell is he in first place? Is everyone else even lazier than him?

He does give you a helpful tip: due to the shortage of trees, don’t go chopping them down.

And by trees, I mean cacti. Don’t chop the cacti or you’ll have Burgess up your butt about it not being the right thing to do and if you keep doing it, he won’t be your friend. Well, Burgess, with your micro-managing skills, I honestly can’t say I’ll be too upset if I just happen to chop another cactus down in range of your beady little eyes. Technically, you can chop the cacti down, you just have to be careful of who’s around and how close to town you are. I tested it an entire day and nobody said anything to me. I wasn’t even being sneaky about it.

But all that doesn’t mean you can’t chop down shrubbery or dead trees. Those are fair game.

Which comes to the next problem that you’ll be facing for a little bit as you get started: lack of water.

Water is needed in order to run your machines, but your machines also need fuel. So you’ll have to juggle two things at once when it comes to crafting materials and such. I know Burgess is a bit of a Karen when it comes to water, but that’s because he manages it. You want water straight from the source? You’ll have to buy it from his shop. Or, you can chop shrubbery, mine rocks, and pick herbs outside which sometimes gives you dew. With enough dew you can make a tub of water.

I have to say that this was a bit rough-going at first, because the water itself from Burgess can become expensive after a while, and while you can gather dew, it’s never a huge amount. Plus the fact that you have to rinse-and-repeat to get the dew day after day.

Once you start getting points to use in skill trees, there are some things you can choose that will help out quite a bit when it comes to the water situation, though. Plus some of the equipment you can craft.

Speaking of the skill tree, however, they’ve made a bit of changes since My Time at Portia.

You no longer gain points when you level up, so don’t count on the fact that you leveled up meaning you can go into your skill tree and start picking perks. There are four sections for placing points into and those are Gathering, Workshop, Combat, and Social. The more you do within one of those categories the more points you’ll get for that tier.

For instance, if you’re constantly fighting the creatures of Sandrock, then you’ll acquire more points for Combat than any of the other sections. Same goes for if you interact with people more, keep doing commissions, gather materials from places, and keep building stuff at your workshop.

Which means if you really want a perk in a specific tier, then you better start doing things for that tier.

Let’s talk about the different tiers for leveling into.

First off, gathering.

This not only consists of plucking plant life, which there really isn’t much of when you look around for them, but it’s a desert, so what do you expect, but also chopping shrubbery as well as dead trees, and destroying boulders. One thing mentioned by Yan at the start are scrap piles. There are different types of scrap piles that you can break apart with a pickhammer, including rubber, mechanical, mixed, and so on. Each pile yields different items, but in order to obtain anything from the scrap in your inventory, you’ll need to use a recycler for them to yield any materials.

It’s a pretty interesting way of obtaining and finding things as results will vary and there are multiple piles in different areas of Sandrock or in the scrapyard itself that you have to pay entry into.

Next up is your workshop.

Once again you’ve got your worktable and your assembly station. They reworked the assembly station a bit, and bless them for doing so, because you no longer have to be carrying and holding a material to use it for assembling. As long as the materials in question are either in your bags or in a storage box, they will be accounted for.

That was such a nuisance in Portia when you had to keep going back and forth with the proper items to build something.

Another change is with Qi, who now deals with the data discs you find and will use them to send blueprints. This time, instead of giving a certain amount of data discs and not knowing what you’re going to get in return, you get to choose which blueprint you want as long as you’re able to purchase it with the amount of data discs you have–again, not on hand, but at least in storage.

I wept from happiness.

Just, you know, make sure to choose the blueprints you’ll actually be able to use first and don’t go for the more advanced ones that you won’t be able to use until later in the game.

Now the combat system.

I’ll be honest and say I think it’s a bit clunky, maybe even a little bit worse than Portia’s. But maybe it depends on the kind of weapon you use. When using two daggers, there are some combos that completely miss an enemy at times, and I don’t know if it’s because the move goes beyond the enemy or what, but…yeah. The lock-on is okay, and once you’ve dealt with one enemy if there’s another nearby it’ll lock onto them afterward.

Actually, after fighting a bit more within the game I’ve come to realize it’s the height difference that can really screw you up when fighting an adversary.

For example, if you’re in one of the ruins and uncover one of the thieving mice, if you’re on the low ground and they’re on a high ground, your attacks are probably going to miss until you get on their level, in which case they’ll have disappeared by the time you’re able to actually do any kind of real damage to them.

It’s so annoying in the ruins, because the mice have a rare chance to spawn.

There are basically five different weapons you can use, which are spear, daggers, sword and shield, and heavy sword being the main ones, but there are also guns you can use at some point. They each have their own fighting styles so it’s nice they give you a choice on how you want to attack things.

Lastly, social.

There are a lot of characters in this game. Like, 33 of them I think, not including the cats and dog and camel and owl you can earn rep with. Some are a bit kooky–I’m looking at you Cooper–but they’re all fun to talk to and get to know. I think some are tucked a bit out of the way so it’s easy to forget they’re there, such as Mort who has a house in a cemetery and it’s at the back end of town with the arcade I never visit and clinic.

I love all their voice actors, honestly, and think they all did a wonderful job. Well…maybe not the camel. She makes me cringe when she tries to tell me good morning. Camels aren’t supposed to talk for a reason.

Getting their rep up isn’t all that hard. I think it might be easier than in Portia because you can get a lot of rep just from finishing commissions, and at some point you can do more than one commission a day. You can also get more rep from them just by talking after certain events. It’s usually +2 instead of +1.

The main thing is to figure out what they all like and to not give them the same thing every day, because they’ll get bored of it.

You’ll find out their birthday after you’ve gotten to know them a bit better–they’ll tell you it themselves.

Everyone just seems more lively in this game.

Post Views: 1