My Time At Sandrock Review: A Diamond in the Rough (Emphasis on “Rough”)

Most of the time, poor optimization and poor gameplay quality go hand-in-hand. If a developer isn’t going to put enough effort into making sure that a game isn’t constantly falling apart at the seams, it’s fair (and overwhelmingly correct) to assume that the rest of the game isn’t going to be too stellar. Every so often, though, you end up with those two things opposed to one another. You’ll end up with a game that seemingly has tons of potential but is coated in so much jank that it makes playing through anything both difficult and frustrating—and, sadly, that’s exactly how the Switch port of My Time At Sandrock ended up.

Building a Better Future

Hey, wait! I wasn’t done introducing myself!

Taking place within the same universe as its predecessor, My Time At Portera, My Time At Sandrock sees the player taking the role of a Builder—a highly diversified (and respected) job centered around crafting a wide variety of objects and structures—rolling into quickly decaying desert town of Sandrock. One of two new hires, it’s up to the player to, alongside fellow newbie Builder Mi-an, help to restore Sandrock to its former glory. Restoring a town isn’t exactly easy work, though—especially if said town is in the middle of a desert—ensuring that you and Mi-an have a long, dusty road ahead of you.

My Time At Sandrock‘s story has a surprising amount of depth to it—especially compared to a lot of other sim games out there. I’ve always found the series’ focus on rebuilding civilization after what essentially amounted to a technological apocalypse to be an incredibly unique premise and MTAS continues to utilize it incredibly well. Of course, it’s not just the fact that the Day of Calamity is used as a backdrop that gives the game a solid story. Sandrock itself (especially its citizens) and the surrounding Euphora Desert have plenty of quests and activities that serve to help constantly build upon the game’s story—all while never taking away from MTAS‘ focus on collecting resources and crafting items.

Living the Desert Dream

Boy, I sure do love the desert and all of its natural wonders!

Before diving too much into the nitty-gritty, I’d like to take a minute to talk about My Time At Sandrock‘s setting. Now, maybe it’s just because I normally play stuff like Story of Seasons and Rune Factory, but sims in the farming/farming-adjacent genre (which, despite its premise, I consider MTAS to be), tend to all use the same kind of setting. The land that you live on is generally very healthy, the neighboring town is lively and abundant with life, and, more often than not, you’re not too far away from some kind of forest or woodland area with trees and critters abound. Now, to be fair, Sandrock could definitely be labeled as “lively,” and perhaps even “abundant with life.” But all of that other stuff that I mentioned? That’s not in this game.

Rather than placing you on lush, fertile ground, just about every place in My Time At Sandrock is awful (and I don’t mean that as an insult). The land you live on is basically dead, the neighboring town is fighting for its life to not completely go under, and all of the land surrounding you is either a desert wasteland or ruins related to the Great Calamity. And, honestly? It’s great. Not only does MTAS place players in a very unique location, but it makes the most of it. Despite how barren everything looks (and oftentimes is), the game itself is very lively and doesn’t ever miss a beat when it comes to offering the player new things to do. It’s great to see games trying new things, and MTAS really feels like it’s trying to be innovated. And, better yet, it succeeds!

One Man’s Trash…

So-called “junk” is actually anything but.

There’s a lot that you can do in My Time At Sandrock, but, ultimately, the game centers around a single premise—making stuff. While not necessarily anything genre-defining, MTAS nevertheless features a robust crafting system with plenty of depth in both its resource-collecting and resource-using parts. In the beginning, collecting materials doesn’t require much more than smashing rocks kicking trees, and chopping down small plants (that are outside of city limits) to collect wood. And, to be fair, you never really stop doing that per se, it just gets a little more complicated.

Eventually, you’ll also start collecting plenty of materials via activities like fishing, farming,  and combat. Oh, yeah, and you also can find stuff by digging through the ruins of an absolutely massive city. That last one’s kind of important (and also hard to miss). Collecting materials can honestly be kind of boring in a lot of games, but I never found that to be the case in MTAS—since you’re always unlocking new places to go and new ways to collect items, gathering things tends to feel like you’re going on some kind of adventure (which you basically are).

Crafting items from your materials feels a tad more tedious—and this is where the Switch port being janky starts to come in. As I progressed throughout the game, I pretty consistently would prepare to make an item only to find out that I was missing a single part. This, of course, isn’t a big deal—part of the appeal of this game is discovering new items. Unfortunately, some technical errors made that a bit more difficult. Normally, you’re supposed to be able to highlight an item and get some details on it. It won’t spell out what you need to to to get it, but it at least gives you a name and description of said item—which is usually more than enough to go off of. In my experience, the Switch version of MTAS just kind of, like… stops doing this after a while. This, combined with the very low-res pictures that it uses for items meant that I would oftentimes have to spend way more time figuring out what I needed than I otherwise should have had to. Fortunately, making stuff is pretty easy other than that.

A Social Oasis

Wait… you mean you didn’t already know?

Regardless of the premise, there’s one thing that most life/career simulations offer to the player in spades—the ability to create and substation meaningful relationships. And, boy, is that ever on display in this game. My Time At Sandrock features almost 60 unique characters with whom you can befriend, with over 20 of them being romancable. In case you aren’t familiar with this genre, 60 characters is a lot—as is 20+ marriage candidates. This also, however, means that you could easily run the risk of most of them lacking depth. Surprisingly, however, this isn’t the case at all. While talking to, gifting, and playing games with everyone can wear you down after a bit (although it’s not at all required, to be fair), each and every character boasts wonderfully unique and (mostly) charming personalities all of their own.

Scraping By

So, is this like a new look, or…?

Almost everything that I’ve said about My Time At Sandrock so far has been positive, and I stand by all of it because it’s all true. Naturally, I’d normally be calling a game like this “good,” or even “great.” And I’d love to do that with MTAS, too. But I just can’t when it comes to the Switch version specifically. My Time At Sandrock for the Nintendo Switch is bad. Like, it’s really bad. The game is filled with more bugs than a single Builder could hope to fix, and they’re constantly ruining what would otherwise be a wonderful experience.

I’m not even sure where I should start, when it comes to how poorly optimized this port is. The game has a terrible framerate and constantly stutters, which only makes things worse when paired with its blurry graphics. There’s also a major issue when it comes to loading assets. There have been plenty of times when objects either load in way too late or fail to load in at all, which has caused some issues with collision for not only myself, but the game’s many NPCs—who also oftentimes fail to load properly (Fang’s clothing stopped loading any color altogether for me). Issues central to gameplay exist, too, like the aforementioned failure to load info displays for items, and failure for a character to properly “attach” to a gathering point—resulting in you repeatedly hitting the ground without collecting anything. I’m hopeful that at least some of these issues will be addressed—and sooner rather than later—but I’m doubtful that everything will ever truly be fixed to satisfaction.

Onto Greener Pastures

Overall, My Time At Sandrock is a great game. There’s tons to do, and it’s got plenty of depth. If I had played it on, say, PC or PS5, I’m sure it would have run fine (or at least serviceable). But I didn’t. I played it on the Switch. And the Nintendo Switch version of My Time At Sandrock is a crunchy, crusty, stuttering mess that I very much recommend that you stay away from.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC; Publisher: PM Studio Developer: Pathea Games; Players: 1; Released: November 2, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $49.99

Full disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher.