Starsand Island has characters from Sandrock

Life simulation game Starsand Island is currently in Early Access on Steam and Xbox. The full version should be released for Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S in summer 2026.

Starsand Island has familiar characters from the My Time-series, both Sandrock and Portia. 

But for them to arrive you first have to fix the transit system. You need to repair the train station, and make the train tracks operational.

 

Visitors From Portia and Sandrock

First to arrive, in summer 23, are Gust and Ginger from My Time at Portia. 

 

 

Fang, X and Nia from My Time at Sandrock arrive in autumn 1.

 

 

My Time at Sandrock: Review (PS5)

I get commissions for purchases made through the links in this blog post.

As I have told before I totally fell in love with and became heavily addicted to My time at Portia. Now I finally got my hands on to its sequel, My time at Sandrock. The release date for the full version of the game was November 2, 2023.

 

At the start of the game you move to a small desert town, in hopes of making Sandrock great again! During the course of the main story you build things, make new friends, and maybe even fall in love...  

 

I had feared that I wouldn't like Sandrock as much as Portia. From what I had seen and read, I knew that the boring and brown desert setting of Sandrock would not appeal to me at all. I also thought that the characters, or namely bachelors wouldn't be as interesting as in Portia.

But, like its precussor, Sandrock took me like a storm. Maybe not like a sand storm? Sandrock does have sand storms occasionally, and they are rather annoying. There can be dangerous monsters lurking in the storm, so beware.

 

But what annoys me most about Sandrock is the fact that you need water for everything. All your machines need water to function. And water is scarce, especially at the start of the game. I felt like I was using all my time and all my stamina just to get dew, which is what water is made from. But luckily later in the game the situation improves, and suddenly I didn't have to worry about water at all anymore. 

Here's a useful tip: When you adopt pets you can use them as servants and send them out to look for things, such as water. And when you do well in the workshop rankings you get water as a reward. But my problem was of course that I refused to buy any water. Yes, you can buy water from Burgess' shop Water World. 

 

 

But I wanted to save my money to more important things... such as better clothes. And I mean better looking clothes, not clothes with better stats. And so far I haven't found a better looking clothing than the wedding dress... so I wear it all the time. Is it a bit crazy? Maybe, but style above all else.

 

Pathea has made many good improvements to Sandrock compared to Portia. You no longer need to carry all items in your backpack, namely the relic pieces. To be able to restore the relics at the museum you don't have to have them on you. Also the festival badges aren't even items you carry anymore, you just automatically have them on you all the time. So in this sense Sandrock really is an easier game than Portia.

And that is not the only reason why Sandrock is better and more relaxing game. There are lot less time limited missions. In Portia you were competing with Higgins, but in Sandrock you are actually co-operating with your fellow builder Mi-an.

 

And as a cat lady I really love the fact that cats are very heavily involved in Sandrock. There are three cat residents, and they even are important part of the main story! And that's just the start of it. There are lots of cat related items in the game, and cats are mentioned in dialogue all the time. I'm gonna write many more posts about all the cat things of Sandrock!

 

 

Other similar farm life sims, such as Harvest Moon/Story of seasons, are in my opinion so boring compared to Portia/Sandrock. In Sandrock something is always happening, and the main story is long and fulfilling. Sandrock is very fun to play, and it is full of seriously funny dialogue. Pathea has really found some great writers. 

When it comes to dating and marriage, there are 12 bachelors and 9 bachelorettes to choose from, and boy that choice is difficult to make! Who to marry? You can date them all if you want to, but you can only marry one... unless you use a mod on PC. Of course you can also divorce, and marry someone else. But who can take all that heartbreak? I'm gonna post more about the marriage candidates later.

 

 

Sandrock does have multiplayer, but so far only on PC. Hopefully it will come to consoles as well.

What Sandrock desperately needs is more trophies. It has the same amount of trophies as Portia, but somehow it feels less. What's worst you get all the story trophies long before the game main story's end. I've been told that this must be because those are based on the early access-version of the game. But as a trophy hunter my heart bleeds because of this. I'd want to keep playing My time at Sandrock forever, but I feel I should move on to other games, because of those pesky trophies.

But I can't give up on Sandrock, not yet. After spending 180+ hours on my first playthrough, I'm gonna start a second one. This time as a male builder. I'm planning on seeing all the scenes and romantic side missions I missed on the first playthrough.

Thank you for the great games, Pathea, and keep up the good work!

 

My Time at Sandrock Collector's Edition for Playstation 5 is currently on sale on Amazon.

My time at Portia: Late gameplay tips

I get commissions for purchases made through the links in this post, at no cost to you.

 

As I told before I became heavely addicted to My time at Portia. Here are some stories from my playthrough, and some tips about what items are needed late in the game's main story.

The best days are when I find shit. A lot of animal feces. You can't buy, order or grow it, you have to find it yourself. And it takes a lot of crap to make fertilizer. And you need lot of fertilizer because you have to have crystal trees, even though crystal is needed in exactly one mission in the whole game. You also need nitre trees. Cotton. Rainbow flowers for pigments, you need a lot of them at one stage and even at the very end, a light 100 pcs. Giant plants for the autumn festival. 

You need wheat (!) for the horse. At one point I started to wonder why the horse's statistics showed a sad face and 100 percent hunger. I read horses like to eat mostly wheat and pumpkin. Well, the wheat didn't help, the hunger is still and always 100% (or maybe it's 100% full?). Fortunately, it doesn't matter, in Portia, for example, horses and children have not been developed. Children never grow up and you can never get rid of them, so it's not worth getting them.

 

How many ways has Portia tried to make me to stop playing it:


1. I was moving boxes from the yard inside and I put them in my inventory but the inventory was full. Normally, things that don't fit in your backpack fall to the ground and you can pick them up, even several days later. Now the boxes and the things they contained disappeared completely, they were nowhere to be found. In the end, I had to load an earlier save... or accept the loss of all the important stuff. I read online that this is how you get rid of things permanently in this game. So beware...

 

2. And then a new attempt at moving the boxes inside. When I had the box in my hands and came inside the house and my husband Gust happened to want to give me money right then, the box and the things in it disappeared forever. I tried to play the same morning many times, and always the same result. If the busband wants to give money, the box in my hands and its contents disappear. In the end, when moving the boxes, I had to make sure that Gust was not at home.

 

3. Then I was just working on my yard when I suddenly fell into the void. A terribly traumatizing experience. There were two options: to wait until the night, but to lose the (work) hours of the rest of the day. Or load up a save and play the day again. I chose the first option.

 

 

4. And then I went to the final boss unprepared and ran out of stamina and couldn't get any more of it. In earlier fights in the game, it hadn't mattered at all. No matter how long I kept watching the sidekicks, they didn't do any damage to the boss. So there was only one option, i.e. rage quit and the day was lost. When you know that in the first stage of the final boss you only need to reach 70% and the sidekicks can handle the rest of the stages completely by themselves... I almost reached that, but no. So don't go to the final boss unprepared like I did.

 

And then the many times when the PS5 claimed that "game access will expire in 15 minutes". Well, it didn't. Not even that one time when the game went dark and I thought that really was the end of it. Well, it was not. All this was because Portia was on Playstation plus extra.


And then I spent many days looking for a racket, because I knew I would need it in the future, and I sold all the old ones... I finally found a racket, but it was out of reach behind a floor/wall. This is a common problem in Portia's mines.

 

 

I always made sure that I had all the needed stuff ready in advance... But in the last mission of the main story (before the end credits) you have to build an airplane. Of course I had all the stuff ready and done. Except one. You need 45 pieces of carbon fiber for that mission and I think I only had 8. And you can only get carbon fiber in two ways, and both require fighting. I had already thought that after the last boss I would never have to fight again. I hate fighting.

Okay, so... you can either send the civil corps to the Ingalls mine to get that carbon fiber. But it is really expensive and requires that you first play through the levels required for the Ingalls mine. Another option is the Deepest ruin, and there if you get an S grade in the level, it is possible that there is carbon fiber in the prize box. Grade S requires you to get through the level in less than a minute. I can't really do that. But luckily you can buy drugs in the Deepest ruin. When you buy a cola, you get an S grade even if it takes more than two minutes. I really wouldn't have wanted stressful fights right then... but who could wait for a better time?

So, just when I was desperately trying to save money for Syphilis (Phyllis), too much money was spent on carbon fiber. Syphilis is an expensive woman, but because of the trophies, she is mandatory. I wouldn't have wanted to give up Gust, but fortunately you can... save the game, and then re-load. In other words, the second divorce was just a bad dream. When I finally made Syphilis' dream come true, I gave her a gift... thank you and goodbye without saving.

Is it a sign of addiction if I keep playing the game even after getting the platinum? But I had to, because the main story missions continue even after that. With the money I saved from Syphilis, I bought a barn where I could finally place the cows that had been waiting in the storage box for a very long time. And I bought some lambs too. They are so cute I can't stand it (and they produce that precious shit!).

 

 

As the main story was threateningly coming to an end, the lack of things to do started to feel bad, so it was time to have a child. During pregnancy, health and stamina are 30% lower than normal, so it's not really worth it if there are going to be fights.

 

 

 

What is a suitable name for Diarrhea's child? At least Poop.

 

 

If the child is left unfed and uncared for, the only consequence is that the relationship with the child suffers. That is, social workers do not take the child away like in the Sims.

 

The main story of the game ends with building of a ship and the epic I'm on a boat moment. It's nice that after many years, my husband thinks this way about me. ("Well, thanks for all your hard work over the years. I suppose I could say... in some regard... I have a lot of respect for you.")

My time at Portia gameplay videos:

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1

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3 (ending and end credits)

4

 

 

I have started to play Portia's sequel My time at Sandrock, and made a first blog post about that game's Macchiato the cat. But more posts of Sandrock will follow...

Review: My time at Portia (PS5)

In the game My time at Portia in the beginning you move to a village, and of course you inherit some land and a workshop with the purpose of doing something, and of course you should make friends with the villagers and marry one of them. So it's a very simple game? No it is NOT.


I never would have believed...


*that I would get totally addicted to this game

*for the game to be so complicated, you have to do many things at the same time

*that it has so many cute animals (for example, those colorful llamas jump around happily and you have to murder them in cold blood)

*that it would be so stressful, my neck and head etc. hurt badly while playing and at worst my hand went numb. In the end, I had to stop (for a day. I took a day off and it was difficult, because of my addiction). Should I play something more relaxing, like RE4 Remake? lol (I guess there is no such thing as easy enough game for me when even Spirit of The North also caused me to rage quit)

 

My time at Portia doesn't hold the player's hand, and it doesn't suit me. When you once again have to look on the internet how to get a new necessary ingredient when the game doesn't tell you about it in any way... without the instructions on the internet, I couldn't have played this game.

 

 

The best thing about the game is of course that you can get a cat! Pinky is a pink and fat cat that I bribed with fish every day for over a month before she finally agreed to be mine.

 

 

 

Building social relationships in the game is painfully slow, even if you gift people with their favorite stuff every damn day.

 

 

The worst moment was when I had two time-limited tasks that required things I didn't have yet. Being an idiot, I took the Commerce Guild task to make 5 sprinklers. They require valves, which the internet claimed to be found in Abandoned mine #2, where I dug in vain for a week (!). In the end I went to the sewage plant, the end boss of the first level always drops 2 valves. I had to go there on four different days, because the first time I got to the boss, I ran out of stamina. It was stressful to have to kill the boss many times when just beating him wasn't enough, you also have to dodge. And I don't normally bother to dodge in games...

And at the same time there was another task, that required stuff which I finally finished one night. I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I have less than 2 hours to find the guy to whom I have to return the stuff. On the first attempt, the guy did not agree to accept the goods and the mission failed. I loaded the day and realized that I had the wrong kind of glass with me the first time. In the end it worked, but it was close. I worked so hard and for so long on those missions that it would have been a bit of a bummer if the time had run out, and damn close it was.

 

There are many bachelors in the game to choose who to marry, but only  for two of them you get trophies. One woman and one man. It's interesting to think about who I would have chosen if trophy hadn't "forced" me to marry Gust. At least not him, that's for sure. In order to get together with Gust, I gifted him daily with bloody umbrellas, they require the spikes of certain animals to make them. Have Portians never heard of vegan umbrellas?!

 

I had to wait a long time for the proposal. When I thought it would finally happen, I still had to take care of the future groom's pig for six days.

 

There would have been really funny answer options when refusing the proposal.

 

Then the wonderful day came and I finally got married!!1 For some reason, the groom's doppelganger was a guest at the wedding.

 

It was a bit sad when at the end of the month/year the situation was that I lost to Higgins only by a small margin.

 

 

LUCKILY I realized that I can reload that last day of the year again. I had messed up and didn't notice that there were tasks available on the wall even though it was the weekend. So I played the day again, and the victory and the trophy were mine!

 

 

(and as a bonus I got [unsaved of course] the divorce trophy, although it was hard to get enough money for the divorce when the merchants started saying they couldn't afford to buy more of my stuff. but it was nice to find out the next morning that the divorce was just a bad dream lol [Gust even dared to say that he knew this wouldn't last])

 

 

It was good to stop playing the game with that win and trophy. I had already decided that I would quit after a certain story mission, which I worked hard for in advance, so that Higgins wouldn't have time to steal any commissions. I have had enough of this health-destroying stressful game!

 

According to reviews My Time at Portia is a relaxing game? WTF? I so disagree with those reviews: How can you rest up your brain when you constantly have to think about how to get this, this and that? When to get that one thing you have to get and make many others? What the hell is this shit about a slowpace game? All the time you are terribly busy, especially when a large part of the missions have a time limit. Surely a stressed soul can't rest, it just gets more stressed!! Ugh, and by the way, it's a shame to know that it's a Chinese game.

 

 

Next, I started playing the original Resident Evil 4 (a poor person can't afford the remake), with chicago typewriter. Killing Spaniards was a much more relaxing activity than playing Portia... until I died of novistadors. I hate them so much.

Game recap 2023

The most played game (on two different users) is my all time favorite game Friday the 13th: The Game.

 

 

But on this second user account only one of the several co op games is showing. (like we always say, in most of the games the second player simply doesn't really exist)

On primary account more hours played than the previous year (2182/1977).

 

 

Personally I played My time at Portia the most. Yes I became very addicted to it, and I very much want to play its sequel My time at Sandrock, but I guess it's still too expensive.

On Twitch I watched something on each day of the year, except one? What was that very special day?

 

 

PSN: pollepakana

PSN: UglyOldWoman

Youtube: superfreakgirl

Twitch: catlady78