My Time at Sandrock is one of those games.
The ones where the player arrives in a small village after inheriting or otherwise just acquiring a dilapidated farm there. Which should then be raised to a new bloom.
On that page, you get to know the other residents of the village and create relationships with them.
The point is that the player is made to grind. To grind hard.
My Time at Sandrock, developed by the Chinese studio Pathea, is available as an Early Access preview for PC. Early Access means that the developer or publisher sells their game as an unfinished, often finished product at a cheaper price. Early Access can be considered a kind of paid beta test.
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A modest cottage can be enhanced to be more gallant, but at least in the preview version, the possibilities for that are relatively limited.
Mayhems of the Grinder
Well. If we're being precise, in Sandrock the player doesn't move to a farm, but to a workshop. The primary task is to serve the village as a builder and maintenance person.
The land is also cultivated. Animals are also cared for. But they are not in the main role.
The game proceeds roughly so that one of the village residents commands the player to build object X.
To grind it, you need a machine Y, which requires 10 pieces of Z to make, which, however, can only be collected when you collect tool P, which again requires H.
When the tools have been updated for the first time and the yard is filled with different machines, you can already do without new things for a while.
Each swing of the search consumes stamina, which can be restored quite ineffectively with food or sitting on a bench. After the stamina runs out, the day's Collectables have been collected.
In any case, most of the builder's time is spent collecting various materials and ingredients from the game area by wielding a pickaxe or an axe.
Both collecting and building are straight-forward packaging, which the developers have not enlivened with any gimmicks.
Items are collected by holding down one button and built by selecting the desired recipe and pressing the make button. Just like in a thousand other games where you can craft something.
Inventory fills up with stuff in no time, as is usually the case in these games. However, increasing the storage space is easy and cheap.
Sandrock takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, where the high-tech remains of a destroyed civilization are both feared and desired goods. To get access to the rarest objects, the player must dive into the depths of the multi-layered ruins.
In addition to boring and safe ruins, you can venture into so-called dangerous dungeons inhabited by enemies. They use a grading system that is badly broken.
The best reward and rating is obtained by running from the mouth of the cave to the exit through all the enemies without touching anything. If this is not fixed by the final version, then nothing will be fixed.
Battles are extremely simple mouse-dragging. Or well, sometimes you have to make a few evasive moves.
Performance-oriented players can find enjoyment in grinding by striving to optimize their daily routines and farm and bar production. This can be done by updating the equipment and thinking about what kind of machine collection would make the work as efficient as possible.
There is no deep work in Sandrock either. But for those who enjoy the performance aspect, the work already offers a good amount of things to do in its current preview form for its price.
To escape the pain of real life
The developers have publicly stated that building, gathering and farming are important features in the game, but not as important as the other side of the species type. That is, the opportunity to take on the role of a character, throw yourself into the relaxed village community and get to know the other residents.
In that respect, however, Sandrock is the most incomplete.
I don't relate.
According to the developers, most of the character-specific content is still fully exhausted. And that's fine.
I got over 8 hours of play before the first time I thought about a character, hey, maybe that's something other than a soulless side quest automaton.
Otherwise, the rhythm of the game is completely lost during the first 10 hours. Interesting hooks are completely missing.
It doesn't help that many of the villagers give a first impression of themselves as barren caricatures.
There are no complaints about the number of villagers. There are quite a few residents.
A scientist who is passionate about the information technology of the past world is a nerd who is locked in his house, dresses untidy, and is not really interested in people.
The merchant is a sneaky manipulator who constantly tries to use the gullibility of others to promote his business.
The host of the yak farm expresses his strict opinions in a Southern United States dialect. And can't read.
The biggest guy in the village threatens to drag those who disagree into the mud. The player's boss, on the other hand, is an arrogant slave whip. And so on.
Sandrock people rarely talk to each other, which is a shame.
When, after getting to know these cool brothers and sisters, I heard that the village's barber-hairdresser-stylist Pablo has returned from his travels and opened his salon again, it was easy to guess what was to come.
Yes. Pablo is doing makeup. Pablo has a skirt. Pablo says darling.
In the finished game, the character-specific tasks and storylines still have every chance to turn the crowd into something interesting. We can already see a few small glimpses of it. But before the developers deliver on their promises, it's hard to care about such an unimaginative bunch.
Pablo says darling.
Those looking for a relaxing experience currently also have to slow down the in-game hours from the settings. Playing with the default settings is toasting the sprint button at the bottom if you want to get something done during the day. And the players on the immersion side also want to accomplish something, because creating relationships with the characters is largely locked behind time-limited side quests.
You usually get one comment per day from the characters. Sometimes they also have something to say about recent events, although everyone reacts to them very similarly.
The horse is going hard
The first part of the series, My Time at Portia, published in 2019, sold very well. Pathea raised another $500,000 in crowdfunding for the sequel, which is significantly more than the barely $150,000 raised by Portia.
The experience gained from Portia and the presumably increased budget can be seen on the technical side in absolutely everything, even for the players, which is great fun.
The visual execution is cartoonish and brightly colored. From menus through the game world to character models and cut-scenes, it's consistently stylish throughout.
The options for character creation are quite comprehensive compared to other works of the genre. Unless you want a beard.
Gaming is admirably smooth even with high settings. I didn't come across any serious bugs once, and smaller ones rarely.
Of course, not everyone has been as lucky, and Pathea has fixed some of its progression-blocking bugs in updates.
...evenly stylish throughout.
Slightly too long loading times, on the other hand, also disturbed my experience. I think the developers have already made it their goal to cut the wait.
The controls are even exceptionally functional, whether it's running around the village or fighting. Not to mention riding a horse. Uhhhhhh!
The developers have managed to combine responsiveness and weight effectively.
Villagers trickle into their homes as the evening gets dark.
The music and other sounds support the atmosphere well. There is a varying amount of voice acting, but at least the current role performances mostly get the point across.
In the case of an old man in a village, however, the immersion is interrupted and the player travels in his mind directly to the recording studio, where the actor tries with all his might to sound as lithe as a 100-year-old as a non-libby under 100-year-old can sound.
In other words, by dragging things out, with a clearly younger voice constantly shining through the sentences.
The sequel is more player-friendly than Portia. Some previously clumsy functions have been streamlined.
I wouldn't pay
Sandrock is a light and warm-hearted game, as titles of the genre usually are. Even though the villagers are fighting for their existence in the post-apocalyptic desert in difficult conditions under the pressure of dwindling food supplies and hostile threats, the mood never turns dark. The work is full of mediocre silly humor.
By the standards of the genre, the slightly different environment, the desert, is not only an external factor, but it is also taken into account in the game mechanics, which is quite fun.
Water is an important resource that the player has to take care of. Sometimes, however, a sandstorm might blow the player's belongings around and block the machines from working.
So far, there is not much to explore outside the village and its immediate surroundings, even though it might seem that way at first.
The piece has real potential to be a decent game at some point. The technical side shines in order, and the performance content is relatively comfortable at this stage. In addition, Pathea makes great use of its characters a few times in the second half of the campaign that is playable so far.
In addition to the character-specific content, according to the developers, among other things, a lot more main story is coming.
And, of course, the biggest selling point in advance, the online multiplayer game for a few players. As an idea, it can be no matter how exciting, but it is worth keeping in mind that it can work no matter how badly.
During a sandstorm, sand flies in the air.
Currently, paying for the advance version cannot be recommended, unless the payer is a player suffering from a severe lack of games.
Why play now the first 20 hours badly empty and broken, when you can play them a little later much fuller. Or to state that nothing came of this game in the end either. Let's see again in half a year.
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