With Pathea Games’ early-access release My time at Sandrock, players will get an early look at what new builders have in store as they settle in the crumbling desert town of Sandrock. While balancing workshop committees, navigating sandstorms, and battling lizards and bandits, players will have plenty of things to discover and do in the new game.
Although there is no shortage of things to enjoy My time at Sandrock as it stands, there are still plenty of areas that are rough around the edges, unpolished, or have yet to be fully implemented into the game. This is a fact of most early access games and they will no doubt improve as the game is updated, but a few areas of improvement stand out more than others.
10 Camera angles dialog
An early access game that is unpolished is often just the default for any game released while development is still in progress. One of the ways this shines through in My time at Sandrock is with dialog navigation.
While My time at Sandrock gives a lot of freedom for players to talk to NPCs in almost any place or context they can find them in, an unfortunate side effect of the freedom is a lot of awkward or downright unusable camera angles that can block the character, the player, or both from a player’s field of view. player. Even in less obstructed corners, the zoom function during dialogue is far from polished so far.
9 NPCs need personal space
Like objects that block characters during a conversation, finding a path for certain NPCs can be difficult if the player starts a conversation in an area with a lot of foot traffic. At this point, NPCs are planned so that their paths rarely, if ever, cross.
However, someone who stops to talk to the player will throw a key in an otherwise smooth lineup, as other NPCs’ pathfinding is not equipped to get out of anyone’s way and will continue their path no matter who gets in their way . As entertaining as it can be to have a Sandrocker walk between the player and who they are talking to during a conversation, it quickly becomes an immersion experience.
8 Missing landscape
The town of Sandrock has a colorful and vibrant landscape, surrounded by Old World ruins and the rough sands of the Eufaula Desert. While the areas the player visits all the time are full of shine and decoration, more distant areas leave room for improvement.
Whether it’s large areas with very little to do, find or explore near the workshop, or empty or even unfinished landscapes further outside the edges of the map, My time at Sandrock has enough that it needs to add before it’s ready for a full release.
7 Inconsistent Artifact Nodes in Ruins
Mining through abandoned ruins is one of the main ways builders will gather resources in My time at Sandrock. For the most part, the ruins are a consistent and reliable place to collect not only ores, sand, and clay, but various Old World artifacts as well.
Unfortunately, in its current state, players can run into issues with artifact nodes that are inconsistent, hard to find, or sometimes even lead the player to an empty hole where the artifact should have been, making navigation and artifact collecting much more difficult.
6 NPCs need to be more expressive
Part of what makes life in Sandrock so appealing is the townspeople who live there. Whether it’s passionate and impulsive farmers like Elsie or more subdued and reserved people like Fang, there’s no shortage of interactions in Sandrock that bring the town to life around the player.
That said, the animations and level of expression that NPCs can show outside of the cutscenes leave a lot to be desired, and often don’t match what the dialogue and voice acting say the character feels.
5 Time should be more noticeable
Just like in real life, a good night’s sleep is an important part of running a well-functioning workshop in Sandrock. Therefore, players must be sure to keep an eye on the time when they are out at night, otherwise they will start exhausted the next day, or even pass out if they can’t get back to their home in time.
Considering how long it can take to get home from certain places around Sandrock, time can easily creep up on players in the current build, as players get a warning a few hours before the lights go out, while otherwise time can be in a small amount. , easy to forget corner of the screen that makes it difficult to keep an eye on while doing other things.
4 Better navigation in the city
The town of Sandrock may be small, but it’s still home to many people, with many shops, homes, and locations that players often visit during their time there as a builder. Usually built on a hill with winding streets and narrow alleys and stairs, it takes a while for new residents to know where everything is.
At this point, the amount of clues new players get is causing a lot of wandering, confusion, and checking the map multiple times, making the adjustment period confusing and often frustrating.
3 Rental must be in the calendar
Whether it’s buying a pass to the Eufaula Salvage Abandoned Ruins, or renting a mount on the ranch to make traveling easier, players often have many weekly rental contracts to track while also keeping track of their workshop and commissions. to manage.
While players can happily add custom reminders to the in-game calendar whenever they want, the calendar in its current state doesn’t do much more than keep track of the month’s holidays, and adding each rental to the calendar manually would be cumbersome to do. to do every time.
2 More to discover across the map
While the town itself may be small, the area around Sandrock is a large place, which builders often have to explore and traverse to gather the supplies they need to run their workshop.
As the player ventures further from his workshop, they will likely find that the amount of scrap, creatures and materials in general becomes much more scarce, as a good half of the area around Sandrock is likely unfinished. While there are no doubt plans for more features, be it material or creatures, for players to explore in future updates, there’s no denying that the map is quickly starting to feel empty.
1 Stamina should be easier to replenish
Unsurprisingly, a builder’s energy is not infinite, and players will need to rest and recover so they don’t overexert themselves. This also means that players will often not be able to do everything they want in one day and will have to plan meals and rest. Unfortunately, both methods of regaining stamina during the day are currently slow, often ineffective, or difficult to access, especially during early game.
Certain foods will regain a little bit of stamina, but without diving into their savings, it’s often not enough to make much of a difference. Once the player adds banks to Sandrock, these can also be used to increase stamina over time, but they are slow and available much later in their first year.
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