My Time at Sandrock Review

09.11.2023 - 23:05 / ign.com

I wish I lived in Sandrock. It's a place where a cat can be a celebrated member of the town guard and every street gets fully decked out for the holidays. It's where newcomers are enthusiastically welcomed, contrary to other Western stories where folks "not from around these parts" are met with suspicion. It's got plenty of Western staples though; a ranch managed by a salt-of-the-earth family (even if the husband is a little unhinged), a cute main street with a saloon and general store, plenty of lovely Western accents, and of course, a touch of danger. My Time at Sandrock is an excellent entry in an ever-growing list of cozy games, consistently fun while managing to stand apart from the crowd thanks to its theme of optimism grown out of hard times.

As a sequel to the post-apocalyptic RPG town sim My Time at Portia, the desert-based follow-up My Time at Sandrock is deeply familiar. Like its predecessor, you've come to this struggling town to assist in improving and growing it by building items and relationships. Learning to build an efficient workshop was a great joy, and I'm proud of how I can take on townie requests and build main story items with relative ease by the end of the 75 hours I’ve spent with it so far.

My time at Portia is, first and foremost, a game about building, and I've had a great time doing it. From mining to taming wild llamas to dating, there’s a lot to do here, and I’m still discovering and unlocking new and usually interesting things. While each of its parts is lacking in some way or have annoying audio bugs, when you put them all together they bolster each other to add up to something fun. I look forward to seeing how My Time at Portia continues to evolve in the future. - Miranda Sanchez, Jan 29, 2019

Read the full My Time at Portia review.

Along the way you’ll have to gather resources, use those resources to build specific items for main story quests, side quests, or optional commissions, and then use the money earned (combined with the increased prestige of your workshop) to invest in better equipment to make even more items. It can be a grind early on, but it's just the calm kind of grind I'm looking for in these games. Progression is steady both in terms of new quests and new things to create, which meant I never lost interest.

Resource gathering starts with digging through scrap piles and kicking trees, eventually working up to diving into old world ruins that are generally safe apart from the occasional trap. Mining is once again a relaxing and quiet activity that has an added drop of excitement thanks to a special rat enemy that appears at random when breaking an object. If it's slain, it'll drop gold and other valuable rewards. I appreciate that this wrinkle kept me on my