As my boat coasts towards the humble harbour of Portia I’m treated to a lovely view of the town and its surroundings. A cute farm sits in the middle of several green fields while a lush forest spreads out to the west. I can see a waterfall that cascades into a river, which flows through the hills and down into the ocean.

The town of Portia is a little further inland, and I can just about see the red tiled roofs peeking over the town’s wall. The sea is calm and I follow its lead. But when I study the horizon again, I do a double take.As I drift closer and the clouds start to fade, I can see colossal metal monuments in the distance. They look old and abandoned, covered in green foliage and clear signs of wear. They tower over Portia, taller than the port’s lighthouse, higher than the highest mountain.

There’s one that looks like a metallic arm poised right above the town – I’d be extremely worried about it falling if it wasn’t for the brown rust that has it stuck in place. For the first time, I understand why Pathea Games has described Portia as post-apocalyptic. I imagined my stay in the seaside town to be entirely relaxing, drifting between crafting and farming, but there seems to be a bit more to this sleepy town than that.

As in Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, in My Time at Portia you arrive fresh-faced in a new town, set to take over the dilapidated business a. My Time at Portia offers an innovative approach to farming, allowing you to take advantage of planter boxes and semi-automatic irrigation systems. You can even take your horse or llama out for a ride.

There’s a history here waiting for me to delve into.My Time at Portia evokes the escapist country life of games like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon: you can grow crops, care for animals, go mining, partake in some fishing, and befriend the local residents. But where farming has been the main money maker in its forebears, crafting and building are at the heart of My Time at Portia. They are the means by which you progress through the game and prove yourself to be a staple citizen in Portia’s community.Related: Sink into the most on PCAs I set my feet down on the shore, the mayor hands me a letter from my father, explaining that he has run off to the other side of the world and left me his empty shell of a workshop – thanks Pa. For the first in-game week in Portia, you focus purely on resource gathering and crafting to help get your workshop up and running. There’s a lot to do, but Portia gives you small missions to complete that slowly open up the world without overwhelming you.The workshop handbook also guides you through the crafting process – think of it as a wiki you don’t need to minimise for – so there’s an easy build-up from crafting a simple wooden box to building bridges. Residents commission work, gently pushing you to quickly get to grips with the system.Residents commission work, gently pushing you to quickly get to grips with the crafting systemThis streamlining gives Portia a more leisurely incline than its peers, but can also work against the game.

After an in-game month of crafting and building, I felt that I had learned all the basics and was ready to make decisions on my own – but the game was still guiding me through missions that couldn’t be avoided, leaving me little room to do my own thing.I wanted to plant more vegetables and really, well, dig into the farming element of Portia. But the land you’re given when you start is modest, and your crafting tools start to fill up the space quickly. You can buy more land, but it’s pretty expensive, and given the relaxing – but slow – nature of gathering resources, crafting, and then selling, saving up becomes a grind. Couple that with Portia’s quick day/night cycle, and you’ll find that getting more than two or three things done in a day is impossible.When you need a little break from the workshop, however, the bright and bucolic world of Portia is lovely to explore.

As you step outside you’re greeted by a golden field of wheat – home to several scarecrows – and a windmill, its sails passively rotating in the breeze.The whole town seems to be recovering from a calamityAs you make your way into town there are lots of small storefronts, and residents bustle around – some of the 30 characters you can befriend and romance. There’s a surprisingly dramatic story behind this idyll, however. The whole town and its residents seem to be recovering from an apocalyptic event that destroyed parts of humanity. The giant metallic structures and abandoned ruins are a constant looming reminder. The Humble LifeMy Time at Portia, Harvest Moon, and Stardew Valley make farming look relaxing with a bountiful crop only a few clicks away. But how realistic are these games?

We asked a farmer to find out.This calamity threw humanity into two mindsets that the residents of Portia encompass. There’s the Church of the Light, a key religion in the town that believe the cause of the disaster was human technology.

Members of the Church of Light live in fear of old gadgets, and warn that use of it will have history repeat itself.On the other side are the residents of the Research Center, who want to investigate old tech for the benefit of mankind – or what’s left of it. They take any relics you find in the ruins and analyse it, helping you craft better creations that can help out the town.Unfortunately, the residents don’t share my interest in their lore. Though their character designs are colourful, they come across a little flat. When speaking to them around town, their dialogue is lackluster, and doesn’t really reveal anything about their personalities or lives.No one seems to know – or care – at all about the giant robot goliaths stooped over the town. Maybe it’s been a long time for the characters in Portia, but I’m desperate to learn more about the mysterious event that gets alluded to but never explained.Well, screw them. I spotted a bright pink cat, appropriately named Pinky, that matched my character’s hair colour and decided that my number one priority would be winning her fluffy heart. She isn’t much of a conversationalist, but I know I’m not missing much elsewhere.Read more: Harvest theWhen I first saw Portia from its beach, my curiosity was instantly piqued.

A beautiful town with a dark history, tied to relaxing crafting and farming mechanics, make the foundations of a great game. Sadly, Portia is held back by the grindy and streamlined nature of its crafting system, and even after two in-game months of getting to know the place, nothing has really changed in this quiet, sleepy town.

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My Time at Portia is a unique take on the life-sim genre, allowing you to build up a local business on the ruins of a high-tech civilization (probably our civilization). In a world where the use of high-tech gadgetry is frowned upon, you arrive in Portia with the deed to your father's rundown workshop and neglected lands. Similarly to other games in the genre, your task is to tidy the place up, rebuild and restore the workshop to its former glory, fulfilling commerce orders from the local township, farming and selling crops, and much more.

My Time at Portia is expected to launch on April 16, 2019, and for fans of games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, it's well worth a look.

A chill life sim

My Time at Portia

Bottom line: My Time at Portia is a relaxing game, once you get past the frustration of learning its systems.

Cons

• Systems are hard to unpack
• Clunky controls and menus
• Janky engine

My Time at Portia has some attractive presentation, with vibrant colors, charming music, and a pleasant cartoon aesthetic. Set in the city of 'Portia,' the game is, perhaps somewhat ironically, post-apocalyptic, built atop the ruins of an ancient, high-tech civilization. The citizens of Portia live a simple life, albeit aided to some degree with the tech of the past, deciphering bits and pieces from fragments of technological relics buried in ancient tombs and dungeons. After creating your character and heading to the city, you receive the deed to your father's workshop, setting up a business to provide the local townsfolk with your services as a carpenter and designer.

My Time at Portia's inviting aesthetic is betrayed somewhat by its depth and complexity, although that's not necessarily a bad thing. At the outset, you're bombarded with tons of options for things to do, achieve, and explore, including abandoned ruins that can be mined for ores, construction tables for filling orders from the local townspeople, and wide open areas full of quirky characters to talk to.

My Time at Portia incorporates systems and features from many other games. You can fully build and customize your home, upgrading the size to accommodate more machinery and farming planters for harvesting and selling crops. The game also has an old school Warcraft-style talent tree, with three columns of skills to upgrade your character as you level up. You can specialize in gathering and crafting, social systems, or combat, and also gear up with new weapons and armor to improve your chances in the game's dungeons.

The game's sizable map is split into a desert area, a grassy plains area, and a marsh area, with a few other supporting locations for budding explorers. It's up to you how you want to progress through the game since most of the activities yield experience points (EXP). You can fish, hunt, and cook, as well as hunt monsters in the local area. Almost everything yields some form of crafting materials, from kicking trees to rummaging around in animal dung (seriously), and learning where to find all of these magical objects forms part of the game's challenge. To upgrade through the game, you'll have to earn enough money (or 'Gols,' in game), as well as the corresponding crafting materials throughout.

Upgrading and building your dream workshops and farms is fun and addictive, alongside the game's many side objectives, like building relationships with the local townsfolk, and furnishing and customizing your home, but the game has a few issues.

What you'll dislike about the My Time at Portia

The game runs at around 30 frames per second (FPS) and is quite stable, across a relatively large open world area with many interior locations to explore. However, it's not the most polished game, lacking a 4K Xbox One X patch, with rough animations and collision mechanics. Targeting and attacking simply doesn't feel that great, so it's probably a good thing that the emphasis isn't on combat prowess. However, the game feels like it actively fights against you as you try to thumb through its menus, some of which oddly utilize d-pad directions for choosing items, rather than the standard 'A' button. It seems as though the game was ported very rapidly from PC, without much thought given as to how it might handle with a controller.

Those familiar with these types of games probably aren't strangers to grinding, but Portia takes this to fatiguing extremes. The game will often give you quests for stuff you can't yet create, and the whereabouts of the reagents to create them are either hard to track down or are simply unavailable due to requiring upgraded facilities.

Which, by the way, also require exotic and elusive reagents, or have to be performed via buildings in the town rather than inside your house. The game allows you to upgrade and move around certain facilities in your base, but others have to be done so from a shop in town. It's frustrating having to run between areas to perform the same tasks, having to note down all the crafting materials you need. Many aspects of the game in this area could have been streamlined.

The complexity might give it a level of depth that some fans appreciate, but for others who just want to chill, Portia feels needlessly aggressive in its overlapping crafting complexities, which go far beyond many similar games in the genre. I am a fan of games with a heavy emphasis on crafting, but even I found My Time at Portia to be a bit of a slow grind.

None of these complaints are what I'd call deal-breakers, however. And if you're a fan of learning your way through complex crafting systems, My Time at Portia's complexity might even be appealing to you.

Should you buy My Time at Portia?

My Time at Portia won't do enough to sell you on the genre if heavyweights like Stardew Valley haven't already. While going 3D literally adds another dimension, the game's clunky menus and systems detract from the fun of building, crafting, and selling, but the general gameplay, dungeons, art style, characters, and light-hearted storylines are enough to make the early confusion worth suffering through.

My Time at Portia could use some polish to improve things like menus, positioning objects, and cursor positioning with a controller, but once you get used to its idiosyncrasies, it's a relaxing and rewarding experience.

Build a community

My Time at Portia

Rebuild your father's workshop legacy

My Time at Portia puts a fun spin on the life-sim genre, but it could do with a few post-launch polish patches.

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