Summary

• The characters in Sandrock are diverse and entertaining, adding depth to the social system and making interactions rewarding.
• Watching the town thrive and come to life as a result of your efforts is satisfying and fulfilling.
• It's easy to focus on certain aspects of the game and overlook others, potentially missing out on the full range of experiences.

The moment I met Yan in , I knew he was a weasel. He’s the leader of the Commerce Guild &nd🦂ash; the center of trade and money-making in your new desert hometown – and when he greeted my builder, I 🔥loved him already.

However delicious it is to hate him, Yan is only one of the truly colorful folks you meet in Sandrock – and with𒈔 over 30 neighbors living nearby, choosing favorites is inevitable.

During the tutorial missions of the much-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s , before you even do much bꦯuilding, you’re introduced to a wide cast of characters that feel like they break with the tradition of other 🗹games of its ilk. Of course, you’ve still got the typical blacksmiths, restaurateurs, and salesmen that are iconic to slice-of-life games, but your new home includes folks of all types. You can train for combat with a self-aggrandizing superhero, do medical trials with a holistic doctor who speaks almost exclusively through his pet bird, or have riveting conversations with the local animals.

After ❀meeting the majority of my neighbors as I ran around Sandrock saying hello, I quickly found a firm f๊avorite. Rocky is a strong, looming salvage yard boss with a prevalent Brooklyn accent, even in his typed speech, who makes it clear he’s not to be trifled with. You end up working pretty closely with him and his team to improve the local salvage yard, but I just like him because you meet him while he’s in the middle of threatening Yan for being such a snake.

The townsfolk in Sandrock are some of the most interesting I’ve seen in a life-building s⛎im g🌸ame and with the gameplay tied intricately to befriending your neighbors, I can’t help but sing the praises of the social system. It’s a bit convoluted at first – why do these people have so many gift preferences, and why can I fight most of them? – however, once you get into the swing of things and pick your favorites, chatting with the locals becomes a highlight of the game.

You’ll end up doing quite a lot of it, too, since the majority of your income in Sandrock comes from accepting building commissions or helping the locals with errands for their shops. My Time at Sandrock seems to focus much more on the social aspect of living in a small town, more than the solo activities iconic in the genre. You can do some mining (it’s how you fill out the museum), and you can grow plants (about a month into the game, but only after defending the local gardener and his home from gecko monsters), but they’re not often the f🃏ocal point.

Completing story missions - the rebuilding quests that inject some life back into Sandrock as you and Mi-an work on improving the town - 🐠feels satisfying. But it’s not so much because they’re enjoyable, per se – the work can become pretty involved and somewhat tedious toward the late-game – but because you get to watch the spirit of this desolate desert come back to life.

As you work through the story, you’ll begin toꦏ see more people spilling into Sandrock, whether visitors with familiar faces or complete strangers who arrive to wander for the afternoon. Not only can you truly feel your work making a diffe🍰rence, but watching it rejuvenate the tired town and its people have been my inspiration for going through the story.

In playing through both My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock, it’s clear to see how Portia walked so Sandrock could run, in a way that still puts the most emphasis on the characters. Mining in this game is unlocked by helping rebuild the salvage yard, allowing you to explore the abandoned ruins of a long-gone civilization and donate to the town’s fledgling museum. The local superhero teaches you the ins and outs of combat, and Sandrock adds new “break” moves that allow your builder to pack some serious punches if you time it right. Gardening doesn’t unlock until a month or so into the game, but unlike in Portia where fertilizer carried your crops through, growing plants in a desert requires plenty of dedicated watering.

Sandrock took the building blocks Pa🎃thea laid📖 in Portia and built on them in some phenomenal ways. Arguably, there’s so much content now that you may end up missing out on side quests if you pursue to main story too persistently. For me, though, it flowed in reverse, with the main story taking quite a while to get through because I was so interested in mingling and side-questing.

Overall, My Time at Sandrock isn’t perfect. After a year in open beta, which was pretty warmly received, there are still some kinks to work out. My review code came with a list of known bugs that the devs promised will be fixed by launch, but I can’t pretend they didn’t impact my enjoyment. Playing on Nintendo Switch, my game would clo✨se every few hours, making the new quick-save function all but imperative. There were plenty of times when my builder would clip through the terrain, or when her hat would make her almost completely bald, or where she’d be stuck running into “nothing” until the frame rate allowed a set decoration to blip into existence to finally reveal what was blocking the path.

I’m crossing my fingers that these are fixed for the full launch, though, because without them to detract from the enjoyment, My Time at Sandrock is a treat. So much of what made My Time a🍷t Portia great has been preserved in the prequel, but it feels like the developers listened to feedback and made some small but ultimately meaningful changes while preserving what worked in the first place.

You can build right from your inventory or workshop storage, instead of needing to hold an item to build with it (but be sure to keep some resources to avoid backtracking and busywork later on!). The gardening system is more involved and realistic, even though you live in the desert now, and they’ll shout at you if you cut down their cacti. Combat, machines, mining, and inventory management have a♏ll been overhauled with improvements too, as well a⭕s other quality of life tweaks.

You’ve even got an encyclopedia now, which logs every enemy you fight, every plant you dig up, every new area you come across, and allows you a detailed look at life in Sandrock. The game even takes a screenshot of iconic moments in the story for you, which not only lets y𓃲ou keep track of your progress, but which also serve as a fun reminder of where you’ve been so far as you work to restore Sandrock to glory.

Overall, I’m hopeful for M🍬y Time at Sandrock. While it does have its hiccups left over from the beta that impacted my gameplay from time to time, they were my only real problems with the game itself. My Time at Sandrock is an enjoyable, well-paced game that eschews genre expectations. I enjoyed tangibly seeing how my own, personal progress was helping to rejuvena⛄te the flatlining spirit of the town.

Besi🍷des, any title that lets me gain actual, in-game strength from decorating my house with hilarious photos of that time Rocky threatened Yan at the Commerce Guild is alright in my book.

NEXT: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Best Games About Small-Town Life