Let’s School, the whimsical headteacher sim from My Time at Portia devs Pathea, will be out next month.
]]>Cute and compelling life simulator My Time At Sandrock is bringing back characters from My Time At Portia, along with new areas to explore and quests to give their lives purpose. If you played Portia and bid sad goodbyes to Albert, Mint and Musa, you can look forward to being reunited over an extra 5-10 hours of dungeons, romance and whatnot when the Old Pals update lands on November 24th.
I haven't played either game, but Steve Hogarty described Sandrock as "Stardew Valley with a gun", so I probably should.
]]>Hope you've gotten your fill crafting and battling in My Time At Portia because Pathea Games have plans for you to spend time somewhere new next year. They've announced the sequel My Time At Sandrock which will launch in early access in March 2021. They've kicked up a crowdfunding campaign as well with hopes to develop a multiplayer mode for the sequel.
]]>Look, we all know that the behemoth that is Stardew Valley isn't going anywhere soon. Heck, it recently got another update. So sure, we'll all be playing it for years to come, but sometimes you want a bit of a switch up - a crop rotation to keep the soil fresh, if you will. To that end, we've got a list of the best farming games like Stardew Valley on PC. Haunted Chocolatier isn't coming for a while, and there are some surprises on the horizon like Moonlight Peaks, but there are a hell of a lot of cute (and not so cute) farming life sim games already out there, and we've picked our favourite from the bunch for this list. Check them out below. From tending a graveyard to learning to be a witch, clearing trash from the ocean to domesticating animals from scratch, there's a Stardewlike for everyone on this list.
]]>Humble's Monthly games bundle will be morphing into the more expensive Humble Choice at some point before the end of the year, but until that happens it's business as usual for the monthly subscription service. In what's quite possibly going to be the last Monthly bundle as we currently know it, the early unlock games for December have now been announced as Yakuza Kiwami, My Time at Portia and SoulCalibur VI. You'll need to be a Humble Monthly subscriber to get them, of course, but if you're not you can join up right now for $12/month.
]]>Harvest Moonesque wholesome life simulator My Time At Portia just got an injection of romantic side-quests in celebration of this week's Chinese Qixi Festival, also known as China's Valentine's Day. In the words of my country's greatest poetess of love Celine Dion: Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that free updates are bon ("good" in French).
]]>It’s hard to keep your eyes off the horizon in My Time At Portia. Its valleys live in the jagged shadow of broken high-rises, buildings draped with moss and towering factories splitting apart at the seams. I needed to concentrate on the group of adorable pastel coloured llamas ahead. My presence didn’t interrupt their frolicking for a second, but I wished they’d at least try to maul me a little bit; it would make what I was about to do feel less icky. With tennis racket in hand (it was stronger than my wooden sword) I slaughtered them all, collecting what bits and bobs remained to craft a hoodie in a lovely shade of blue. One commission down, and what felt like a million more to go.
]]>Judging by the Steam charts, players have been enjoying their time with My Time At Portia. The same can't be said for the voice actors, who have spent the past year dealing with poor communication and inconsistent payments by devs Pathea Games. Yesterday Pathea acknowledged their mishandling of the situation, claimed they were currently in the process of ensuring everyone was properly paid, and promised to do better in the future.
]]>Don't be scared. It's OK. I've got you. Hold my hand. Tighter. Come on. We can do this together. You and me. Lets... Steam Chart.
]]>The game which sounds like summer hols at your posh boarding school gal pal's chateau spent riding horses and investigating the secrets of the grandmother who lives in the attic but is in fact a build-o-farm 'em up, My Time At Portia, today launched properly. A bit like a 3D take on Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon and such, it's about farming and fighting and crafting and grinding. Fraser Brown found that tedious when he played Portia shortly after its early access launch, but player reviews do seem positive a year later.
]]>Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the (well-tended agricultural) wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s taking a break in My Time at Portia, a crafting sim with shades of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley.
Tirelessly exploring early access games takes its toll, so this week I’m off somewhere relaxing: a post-apocalyptic town. Portia is more Ghibli than Fallout, thankfully. It’s a brightly-coloured, charming place, surrounded by vast green fields and gargantuan ruins from the time before the cataclysm. A perfect spot for a holiday, then.
]]>Aw MAN! Just when I'd started up a great new running gag for the appearance of GTA V in the charts, this week it's fallen out! And Divinity: Original Sin 2 has finally failed to make the grade for the first time this year. However, you'll be relieved to learn CS:GO and Plunkles don't let us down and wearily continue their infinite reigns.
Meantime, there's quite a nice mixture of fresh and more recently popular scattered within.
]]>Post-apocalyptic life usually seems stressful but it actually looks quite cheery in My Time At Portia, a new Stardew Valley-ish craft-o-explore-a-life sim RPG which hit early access today. Sure, the skyline is dotted with overgrown skyscrapers and the dungeons beneath the town house biomechanical monsters, but aside from that it looks pleasant enough as we farm, craft, make friends, and all that. The full version is due later this year--and I'd rather wait for that myself, as I tend to with singleplayer games--but if you want to visit Portia now you can. It does also have an old-ish demo to try first.
]]>My Time At Portia [official site] is a post-apocalyptic RPG. But if this is what the world looks like after an apocalypse then (WARNING: HOT TAKE INCOMING) maybe Donald Trump is the best thing that could've happened to us. It's absolutely gorgeous, full of colour and wacky characters, like bears in blue and gold dressing gowns.
The premise is that you arrive in Portia and start with a basic workshop, and it's your goal to grow your business from there. You'll explore the town and surrounding areas, talk to NPCs (all of whom have routines and backstories), cut down trees, craft items and fight monsters. It looks like a mix between Harvest Moon, Minecraft, and Stardew Valley, which are a few of my favourite things. It's playable right now via a free alpha build that you can download here (it's worming its way onto my PC as I type this).
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