alias_sqbr

My Time At Portia is a crafting sim for Windows and various consoles (but not Mac, sadly)
I definitely haven't finished this game yet, but it seems like finishing it will take A While, so here's a preliminary review.

So far: it's a little slow and doesn't quite have the same charm as Stardew Valley, but is still fun and cute. I bought it when I caught a cold to keep myself busy and it's definitely done that.

You can play as a man or woman, and all the many love interests are bi. I haven't gotten to the romance yet (did I mention this game is slow) but the characters are endearing and varied if not massively engaging. Also you can befriend THREE DIFFERENT cute animals.

But mainly it's about gathering and crafting resources. If you enjoy that, you will enjoy the game. If you don't, you will be very bored.

Here's the trailer.

I'm three and a bit months/seasons into the first year, but I have no idea how long it normally takes to finish the game. I'm near the end of a few crafting trees, but have barely started to gain people's favour. So...who knows?

This is a crafting sim rather than a farming sim: you can grow crops, but it's not the focus of the game. I have a total of two plants, and so far could have gotten by pretty easily with one or even none.

Instead the bulk of the game is spent chopping trees/smashing rocks etc, and then turning the gathered materials into components for various furniture/machines etc, for yourself and other people.

Fulfilling other people's orders nets you not only money, but favour with the person who commissioned you and the town in general. You can also gain favour through conversation, gifts etc. Once you get enough favour with a given person you can hang out and talk, and in some cases date/marry etc. There's three animals you can befriend (a dog, a cat, and a pig) and I am very much enjoying slowly winning over the local stray cat with gifts of fish.

There are a bunch of minigames and different sorts of things to do: fishing, mining for relics, dungeon crawling etc. This creates some variety, and for the most part it's pretty easy to avoid anything you don't like (which is good because this game has the most annoying cooking mechanic I have ever encountered). There's more unavoidable combat than I was expecting in the main quest, though, and some necessary items which seem to only be available in dungeons. The combat is pretty easy and the boss battles are forgiving, I just got the best equipment I could find then key-smashed my way to victory, but if you have VERY bad hand-eye coordination it could be troublesome.

On the plus side, you don't have to kill any of the cute non-hostile animals around town. You can but I choose not to.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic agrarian society, which has rebuilt several hundred years after some sort of technological apocalypse destroyed the previous civilisation. The landscape is littered with ruins, which is a great aesthetic, and there's ongoing tension between scientists wanting to revive the old tech, and the church, who think doing so will only bring more destruction. The narrative is ambivalent on this conflict so far, I'm not sure where it's going. Possibly nowhere! Do not play this game for the plot, lol.

The art is mostly great. Everything is simple and soft, with lovely hand painted textures on low poly 3d models. The character designs are cute too, if not a style I would personally choose. But sadly they are let down by the 3D models setting the eyelids too far up or something, so that the only characters who don't look like their eyes are bulging out of their heads are the ones intended to have heavily hooded eyes.

The characters and writing are...ok? I think? Even after nearly a year in-game, I haven't had many chances to really talk to anyone at length. From what I've seen, the characters tend to be pretty simplistic: the Nice Farm Girl, the Spunky Explorer etc, but there's a fair variety and they fit together nicely into a believable community. So I haven't felt massively inspired to get to know people, but it's a nice environment to wander around doing quests in. The plots have all been pretty simplistic too, but largely inoffensive.

One thing I like is that, unlike Stardew Valley, while favour accrues slowly it doesn't decay over time. So I'm slowly gaining everyone's approval, most people are at a little under 1/10 stars.

The only characters I've gone out of my way to befriend are the cat Pinky (LOOK HOW ROUND SHE IS) and the scientist Petra. I see Petra a lot anyway for plot reasons and am a sucker for science girls, plus she's cute and has actual eyelids. I'm only at 3/10 stars with Petra despite months of gifts etc, and we recently went on our first date, though at this stage it was entirely platonic. On this date I got TWO WHOLE LINES OF BACKSTORY. (She once went to a big city and was wowed by the cool technology)

Since winning over Petra is taking so long, I've decided to try and get to at least two hearts (which lets you go on a date) with every eligible lady in town.

Alice: A slightly neurotic florist.
Emily: Your cheerfully wholesome farmgirl neighbour. Seems to be the default love interest, and is pretty likeable.
Ginger: The sickly, sheltered daughter of the mayor. I like her but I've looked up spoilers and this is Not The Romance For Me.
Lucy: The school teacher.
Mei: Runs the local paper, bouncy and determined.
Nora: Priest's assistant for the anti-science church, which has put me off. Otherwise seems nice enough.
Petra: A scientist who loves learning. BEST GIRL.
Phyllis: The town nurse. Seems nice?
Sam: Fearless, self confident explorer/member of the Civil Corps (town watch). Calls the protagonist "kid", which I find endearing in a female LI.
Sonia: a waitress who puts thought into the art of food. A little Valley Girl stereotype but likeable.

I actually also ended up going on a date with Petra's middle aged female boss Merlin, as part of the plot. But she was just scientifically curious to know what dates were like, and eventually decided it was a waste of time that could be better spent doing research haha.

And for completeness, the eligible dudes, who I do like the idea of dating if I ever play as a guy.

Aadit: Gentle man who runs the tree farm. Seems a little old for the PC but is nice.
Albert: In construction. Seems a little laddish but has a cute voice.
Antoine: Femmey pink haired assistant at the town hall.
Arlo: Leader of the Civil Corps, has a sort of heroic personality.
Django: Runs the local restaurant. Seems kinda old.
Gust: Seems douchey but his wiki page implies he's a tsundere.
Mint: Literally moved to town yesterday, which definitely makes me feel like there's a lot more of this game to go!
Oaks: Sweet, odd man who was literally raised by bears.
Paulie: Musclehead owner of the hardware store.
Remington: Another member of the watch. A bit reserved but seems nice enough.
Tody: Fisherman with an unfortunate moustache.
Dr Xu: A nice doctor. Hottest character in the game imo, so currently top ranked in the running for Future Husband.

There's also six of the seven identical Hulu brothers, who I absolutely cannot tell apart. They're nice enough but don't seem designed to be appealing.

I haven't encountered any explicit queerness so far but even a queer coded character like Antoine is more than these games usually have. So I'm...cautiously curious. The wiki led me to some people who found his character type homophobic, especially since he apparently has a somewhat stalkery crush on Dr Xu. I see their point but I'm basically ok with a swishy bi man if he's written as a full person (as much as anyone in this game is)

The ethnic diversity is...a little better than Stardew Valley I guess? It's mostly white, including the defaults for the PC, but while there may only be one very dark skinned character (namely Petra) there's actually multiple ethnicities. The character creator options were limited, especially for hair, but they did some nice stuff with the skin colours than let dark skin look nicer than it usually does in these games (and then only made...one dark character...) I did get to give my character a cute English accent, blue hair, and freckles.

The female characters are interesting and varied, but the people in charge tend to be men. The fact that I'm playing a woman doesn't seem to have affected much. (SO LET ME PLAY AS NON BINARY YOU COWARDS *cough*)

There's been some eh stuff involving disability and fatness.

Anyway! It's fun! Writing this makes me feel like playing some more even though it's getting late. Gotta smelt a bunch of metal bars so I can make a BETTER smelter to make even MORE kinds of metal bars.