Life in the desert isn’t bad.
It’s become something of a meme when Nintendo Directs come around to count how many of the games shown involve farming. Suffice to say, the Switch has no shortage of such titles, from Story of Seasons to Stardew Valley to Harvestella. While it can sometimes seem like too much, the genre is clearly popular, and My Time at Sandrock, the follow-up to another Switch game, My Time at Portia, really stands out from the crowd.
While My Time At Sandrock involves farming, it mixes in a number of other concepts. At the outset you come to a desert town to be their new “builder,” a person in charge of crafting various items and machines for the townspeople. You gather resources that can be processed into different components, which then can be assembled into more complex machines. Budgeting time and stamina, mining, chopping wood, and fighting animals is key to maintaining the supplies you need to keep your operation running.
Resource management is the main focus of My Time At Sandrock. Beyond the raw materials, the various machines you use to process and craft items take time to operate, and it can be tough to juggle those and keep projects on track. Each machine also requires fuel and a water supply, and as suggested by the desert setting, water can be hard to come by. It can be kind of stressful in a fun way to try to keep all those plates spinning. I’d spend most of the day mining in the abandoned ruins for the ore I need to build my next project, then rush back to my workshop to get that processed before heading into town to socialize. In truth, the most important resource to manage in this game is your time.
There’s also a combat element, with a surprising amount of depth and different weapon styles, including melee and ranged combat. I tended to prefer using the guns, which means keeping up with crafting a steady supply of bullets, but mixed in the sword and shield for close-range fights. There are several dungeon-style areas to traverse, as well as beasts in the overworld that can be killed for materials.
The main story involves a series of missions where you fix up the town, a desert outpost that appears to be on its last legs when you arrive, with a lot of things in disrepair and people wanting to leave..The big projects you build will advance that story, but a lot of what you do day to day is commissions: building smaller items for the other people in the town. These allow you to make some cash and build up your personal relationships, and it’s fun to interact with the various personalities in Sandrock. The dialog for the villagers is voiced, which helps add to the atmosphere and makes the town feel more alive. In addition to building friendships, like many games of this type, there are a number of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes you can romance.
The main issues with My Time At Sandrock, at least on Switch, are mostly technical. The frame rate dips, and there’s a fair amount of graphical pop in. That’s not a huge issue in this kind of game, but what’s more annoying is the load times. There’s a pretty long load time when entering the game, which I found particularly frustrating as this is the kind of game I like to be able to pop in and play for a little bit in handheld mode and that means I have to sit there waiting for it to start each time. While it’s not as bad once you get in, the short delays when in the menus can be irritating in a game where you spend a lot of time navigating menus.
Despite the technical issues, My Time At Sandrock is a very engrossing game with a satisfying gameplay loop. The town and characters are very charming, and it’s very easy to end up repeatedly saying “I’ll just play one more day.”
