Life within the desert is not dangerous.
It’s grow to be one thing of a meme when Nintendo Directs come round to rely how lots of the video games proven contain farming. Suffice to say, the Swap has no scarcity of such titles, from Story of Seasons to Stardew Valley to Harvestella. Whereas it may possibly typically look like an excessive amount of, the style is clearly widespread, and My Time at Sandrock, the follow-up to a different Swap sport, My Time at Portia, actually stands out from the group.
Whereas My Time At Sandrock includes farming, it mixes in various different ideas. On the outset you come to a desert city to be their new “builder,” an individual in command of crafting varied gadgets and machines for the townspeople. You collect sources that may be processed into completely different elements, which then might be assembled into extra complicated machines. Budgeting time and stamina, mining, chopping wooden, and combating animals is vital to sustaining the provides it is advisable preserve your operation operating.
Useful resource administration is the primary focus of My Time At Sandrock. Past the uncooked supplies, the varied machines you employ to course of and craft gadgets take time to function, and it may be robust to juggle these and preserve tasks on monitor. Every machine additionally requires gasoline and a water provide, and as steered by the desert setting, water might be laborious to come back by. It may be sort of anxious in a enjoyable method to attempt to preserve all these plates spinning. I’d spend a lot of the day mining within the deserted ruins for the ore I have to construct my subsequent mission, then rush again to my workshop to get that processed earlier than heading into city to socialize. In reality, a very powerful useful resource to handle on this sport is your time.
There’s additionally a fight ingredient, with a stunning quantity of depth and completely different weapon types, together with melee and ranged fight. I tended to want utilizing the weapons, which suggests maintaining with crafting a gradual provide of bullets, however combined within the sword and protect for close-range fights. There are a number of dungeon-style areas to traverse, in addition to beasts within the overworld that may be killed for supplies.
The primary story includes a collection of missions the place you repair up the city, a desert outpost that seems to be on its final legs once you arrive, with a whole lot of issues in disrepair and other people wanting to depart..The large tasks you construct will advance that story, however a whole lot of what you do day after day is commissions: constructing smaller gadgets for the opposite folks within the city. These assist you to make some money and construct up your private relationships, and it’s enjoyable to work together with the varied personalities in Sandrock. The dialog for the villagers is voiced, which helps add to the environment and makes the city really feel extra alive. Along with constructing friendships, like many video games of this kind, there are a variety of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes you possibly can romance.
The primary points with My Time At Sandrock, no less than on Swap, are largely technical. The body fee dips, and there’s a good quantity of graphical pop in. That’s not an enormous difficulty in this sort of sport, however what’s extra annoying is the load instances. There’s a reasonably lengthy load time when coming into the sport, which I discovered significantly irritating as that is the sort of sport I like to have the ability to pop in and play for just a little bit in handheld mode and which means I’ve to take a seat there ready for it to begin every time. Whereas it’s not as dangerous when you get in, the brief delays when within the menus might be irritating in a sport the place you spend a whole lot of time navigating menus.
Regardless of the technical points, My Time At Sandrock is a really engrossing sport with a satisfying gameplay loop. The city and characters are very charming, and it’s very simple to finish up repeatedly saying “I’ll simply play another day.”