Recently, there has been a surge of survival post-apocalyptic games that shows where exactly humanity ends up after a cataclysmic event and how they are dealing with the fallout of such an event. The most recent Legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild uses this concept and executes it perfectly. Horizon: Zero Dawn also does this. Fallout is a series that is popularized by this concept. Your character that you control exploring through various nuclear Wastelands in America which are the results of a nuclear war with another country. Humanity is still very much alive and trying to do everything they can to survive.
My Time At Portia is an open world RPG game and is also another great example of this concept, although it is a bit more peaceful. You start out as a young adventurer that is being dropped off at a little town called Portia. Your goal is to build, fight, and explore everything you can in an attempt to make your workshop as big as you can. It feels very much like Stardew Valley mixed with Breath of the Wild. In the small town Portia, there are a number of NPC characters that you can interact with, do quests for, or simply hang out with. Doing so increases your relationship with that character. Each and every one of the NPCs have their own life as well. They have things to do, places to be. You will have to pay attention to their schedule if you want to be able to hang out with them.
Now, the setting is post-apocalyptic, but this looks to have passed a very long time ago as outside of the town are vast, green fields in every direction, all filled to the brim with plants, minerals, animals and monsters. All of these resources are untouched, but you do have to get through all of the creatures that were spawned from the calamity. Get far enough and you can find mountains, caves, lakes, marshlands, highlands, other islands, reefs, and a whole bunch of other natural landscapes, all of them filled with relics of a long forgotten past.
The crafting is very simple for tools. Simply having the materials on you will allow you to make the object you desire, so long as you are in front of the proper workplace like a furnace or a workbench. When it comes to building bigger objects like a furnace, you do need to have the materials on you, but you are given step-by-step procedures as to how to put all of the pieces together to create the object. It really makes you feel like you are building an object and it can help you keep track of all the materials you have and all the work you have done on the object so far.
Even with the recent surge of these types of open world games, I will never get tired of them. They all bring their own formula to the table as to how humanity is faring and what you can do to help make things better for everyone or for yourself. There are also tons and tons of back story that can be found by simply looking around in your surroundings and those interpretations made can be different for each person that experiences them. This can create a very intricate story that is never told, but is always there. This combined with how all the NPCs act on a day-to-day basis really makes it feel like a living, breathing world that has been crippled and is trying to get back to the way that it was before the initial event. These sorta games really make me think that all my actions and decisions have a major impact on the characters and on the world itself. Whether that impact is good or bad is all up to the player.
Download the alpha demo on itch.io.
Played it? We’d love to know what you thought about it.
