Stephanie Bendixsen: You’ll grow old and die before My Time At Portia loads

If the idea of an experience that’s part Minecraft and part Animal Crossing intrigues you, then new game My Time At Portia might be tempting - if you can ever get past the load screen.

There’s a particular joy to be found in the resource-collecting, mining, crafting and building games that allow us to consider ourselves much more capable than we truly are.

Though some may wonder why a person might spend hours at a time hacking away at some digital tree-trunk to obtain enough wood to build a table for your similarly virtual house.

I can’t quite explain it either, I just know that it taps into something obsessive within us — mine, collect, craft, repeat. Stop every so often to enjoy the fruits of your labour by taking a well-deserved screenshot.

My Time At Portia is a cute, cartoony take on this genre, sending you across the sea to an island filled with treasure-filled mines to explore, a home to restore and various crafting contracts to take on to earn cash.

My Time At Portia is a cute, cartoony take on the genre.

You take over your Dad’s old workshop — a man who has up and left for the other side of the world without much explanation, so your first task is to set about repairing your dilapidated home.

There’s an element of assumed knowledge when it comes to games like these, so naturally I wanted to set about making the necessary tools I needed to start woodchopping and chipping away at stone, but the game didn’t do a great job of making this an intuitive process.

I fear much of this is just due to poor direction — but I do think it has also suffered a little in its port from PC to console.

There’s no on-screen menu telling you that your inventory can be found by hitting the touchpad on the PS4 controller (a button I still forget exists). And after I’d figured out how to build a certain crafting station — I decided to head into to town to talk to my mission guy. But he then instructed me to build the same item. The game couldn’t recognise that I’d already done this, so I had to waste precious resources making another one.

My main gripe with this game’s new home on console is the loading.

Even going from outside into your tiny house — a space that surely shouldn’t require a huge amount of loading time — you’ll grow old and die on the couch before you load into the next area.

Harsh, I know — but it’s 2019!

Loading time is what let’s My Time At Portia down.

Loading is such a pain and I’m just not interested in hanging around and waiting for the game to resume every time I move from one room to the next.

Venturing into my first mine — it was an underwhelming experience to say the least.

They do get much more advanced as you progress into the world, with monsters and other such obstacles.

But the mines themselves are nothing more than big empty caverns you have to scan with a pair of special goggles until you see a blip that tells you where to dig. It was hardly the adventure I was promised.

It at least provides you with an opportunity to pull in loads of unique loot that you would have otherwise had to grind-away by picking apart boulders lying around in fields.

Looking forward at what is possible in Portia, there seems to be a fairly deep system of smelting, farming and crafting, particularly once you start getting some weird and wonderful commissions coming in.

There’s a job board in the centre of town that keeps a decent supply of tasks coming through, so in addition to sprucing up Dad’s old abode — you’ll have plenty of work to keep you busy.

With so many excellent games in the genre, is My Time At Portia enjoyable enough to capture your attention?

The question is — with so many excellent games out there in this genre like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon — is this different or enjoyable enough to capture your attention for any meaningful length of time?

Personally, I would say stick to PC, as it seems like it makes a stronger case for itself there — or the Nintendo Switch given it’s the kind of time-waster that would do well on a long commute.

That’s if, however, you’re happy to wait for the game to load.

For me, I lacked the patience to make it far enough into my journey to really see it shine — though veterans of the genre may feel it’s par for the course.

I know I still have it in me to lose myself in a world of tree-chopping and llama-slaughter (it’s a long story — but they’re very cute and I murdered a lot of them). I love seeing my hard work pay-off as my mark on the landscape continues to grow.

But that’s all providing the game feels intuitive and worthwhile — because while I have all the time in the world to farm for wood, I refuse to faff about in menus or wait for the game to load. I’m stubborn like that.

My time at Portia, unfortunately, was decidedly short.

Originally published as Stephanie Bendixsen: You’ll grow old and die before My Time At Portia loads