My Time at Portia E3 Impression

My Time at Portia is another title in the growing life and farming simulation genre, where your character is coming to live on the island of Portia and, being gifted a home and workshop by your father, must (at least to start) prove your worth as part of the community.  My demo opened right at the start of the game, where I was presented with a character creator.  I wanted to jump straight into the action, so I chose a female character, hit the randomize button a couple times and went with the default name of Linda, and landed on Portia.  It turns out my father was originally from here, but left ages ago.  He’s left me his run-down workshop (ugh, thanks?) but before I’m even gifted a Builder’s License, I’m going to need to prove myself to the locals!

First I spent some time running around picking up sticks and pebbles, because… stop looking at me like that, I’m not crazy.  Everyone knows that stone and wood are crucial early-game materials.  Once I was done gathering a few things, I headed into town to get my first assignment: make an axe and a pickaxe.  Surprise, they needed wood and stone; guess I wasn’t crazy after all!  I headed back to my father’s workshop and made both in quick succession.  The axe let me chop down trees, which made gathering larger amounts of wood, as well as sap, a cinch.  The pickaxe let me chop up big rocks, which not only let me gather larger amounts of stone but also copper.  Nifty.

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I headed back into town to show off my two new tools and I was charged with a second task: to make a more complex, multi-part item.  I headed back home and was able to make two of the pieces right away –- a stone stool, as well as a pair of grinding stones.  I’d used up a fair amount of my SP during the day swinging my axe and my pickaxe however, so I decided to go to sleep for the evening.  However, when I woke up I discovered that because my house was so run-down, I wasn’t getting a very good night’s sleep!  I was going to have to repair all the holes in the walls and floors if I was going to get a more restful slumber.

I quickly set to work repairing a couple of the smaller holes, but ran out of wood quickly, so I headed back out into the wilds to begin chopping down more trees.  Unfortunately, this is where my demo ended; I didn’t even have time to acquire the copper needed for my copper bars.  My Time at Portia is currently available as an Early Access title on PC, so I can pick up a copy if I want to keep diving deeper into this adventure from home. The game is also planned for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch later this year.