If you liked My Time at Portia, skip the review and buy the game, it's an overall improvement to his predecessor!

If you like "Stardew Valley" like games, this can be an interesting title for you!

What is my Time at Sandrock?
Sandrock is a "You come into a run down town to take over a run down activity to improve yourself and the city" genre (Stardew Valley, Coral Island, Portia, Harvest Moon, etc..) but here you are not a farmer, you are a Builder in a post apocalyptic (but cute-ish) world.

You will have to gather resources, build stuff, take main quests as well as commisions, with time and gifts you will slowly win the hearth of the Sandrockers, unlocking their personal stories while unfolding the story of Sandrock.

What are the pros of Sandrock?
- Cosy gameplay: Sandrock isn't much of a grinding game, yes it may happen that you will need an extra run into the caves to get the resources you need and sometimes you will have to wait for some ingots to smelt but it's not tedious or really long.
- Good story: This is the big improvement from Portia, the story is nice and has a couple of twist, nothing incredible but also a welcome surprise for this series. Townies have some better stories as well (compared to Portia) and seem more entertaining.
- Lots of hours of gameplay: Despite it's not the most replayable of games (if not for seeing how the different romance changes some dialogues), Sandrock has a solid gameplay time, around 150 hours more or less

What are the cons of Sandrock?
- Late game content: Like Portia, Sandrock has a problem with the late/end game part, even if some quest and sidequest, I can't ignore the fact that the last part of the game feels too empty (various days without anything major to do and no more personal sidequests from Townies), buggy (translation quality drops HUGELY in late game as well as some bugged parts, showing more care in the development of the first and central part of the game rather than the late game) and overall less interesting than the previous parts. Also the last townies that join the town don't have much dialogue lines (often resorting on generic talks) and aren't befriendable.
- Relations with townies are not a game changer: Townies that have an important arc are added to the MAIN quests (so there is no skipping or choice on them) while lesser arcs are left to the relationship rating but really don't add anything to the story. This makes the game not really replayable as there is no much impact on the game based on how you handle the relationships.
- Multiplayer: This is a bitter part for me, I backed the game hoping in a full Co-Op experience with my wife but halfway into the development the Multiplayer was changed into a sort of Sandbox experience with several goal steps and almost no story. It feels empty and boring in my opinion, the best choice would have been either make a Stardew-Valley like MP where players can experience the original story or simply not waste resources and time on it. An half-backed multiplayer mode will not satisfy anybody, if you seek a good Co-Op multiplayer, do not take Sandrock into consideration

I got this to play with friends and I am very disappointed that the multiplayer part of the game is a empty shell of the single player experience. It has no story the way that it was described in the game pitch to kickstarter backers.

Very sad outcome.

I'm still early on at just under 10 hours. I know this game is very long! I've heard there are three acts and it will take over 100 easily to complete them all.

This game manages to stand apart from other sort of 'chore' games like Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and so on. This game focuses on crafting machines rather than farming, although farming does exist. The crafting is fairly complex, and there are lots of different machines that you can create that will help you make more and more parts to create even more things. The complexity is staggering even 10 hours in. I have 5 more 6 machines and have barely scratched the surface of the book of craft-able things. Furthermore, my machines have upgrade paths.

The more you unlock, the more flexibility you have in crafting more things. You can craft multiple tiers of weapons that you can use to fight enemies or craft new clothes, furniture, etc. There are an endless number of requests to craft things for money, reputation and items.

As for other chores you will be doing? There are arcade mini games that can help you get items, there are dungeons to explore and ruins to mine out for ore and data discs. Data Discs are used at the research lab to help research new blueprints for more machines.

Now, townspeople and relationships. This game has a LOT of NPCs. Everyone has voiced dialog which is impressive. The game also inundates you with tons of events in the main story and outside the main story as well. Anyone can date anyone regardless of gender, so pick who you like. I think there's an absurd amount of romanceable options, like 21. From what I've seen the townspeople are fun, and there's a lot of different personality types. Some people come off very distant, but I'm certain will warm up to you if you raise their affection.

I haven't even touched the social aspects of the game, but if you like creating gifts and raising affection, you are going to be very busy. There are machines for cooking meals, and you can farm or raise animals for other unique items.

Did I mention that as you gain experience doing various tasks, you'll be getting skill points to invest in a variety of different skill trees? There is a skill tree for gathering, there's one for social relationships, one for crafting and even more I can't even remember off the top of my head.

If you like collecting, there's also things you can dig up in the ruins and offer up to the museum.

One last notable thing to mention is the story. Well, the main story is very long and you will always have a main task to work on if you want to advance. The premise of the game is that you are in a small desert town built on the ruins of an ancient, advanced civilization. One of the dungeons you can explore is like a giant skyscraper that was buried in the sand and no one knows how tall it is, because they haven't dug to the bottom floor yet. That's our job. There's also a sidestory with a bandit gang involving a person who used to be a member of the town but went 'crazy'.

Anyway, it's a HIGHLY ambitious game that you can really sink your teeth into. It's got so many layered systems that I never know exactly what I'm going to be doing day-to-day. It's a long road - perhaps one might call it a tremendous grind!- but it's a satisfying one.