My Time At Portia is an adorable slice-of-life simulation that went through Steam’s Early Access program to find itself fully-released January 15th of 2019. You take over your father’s crafting shop, and immerse yourself in a simple life about town in a post-apocalyptic society. Post-post-apocalyptic might be a better name, as blue skies have returned and fields are flush with verdant meadows; you won’t find corpses strewn about, nor ghouls attempting to eat your brain.
You will run into a rival builder, and you’ll want to brain him with a hammer, but you’ll be smiling throughout the entire smiting process. He’ll actually enjoy it too.
The title is celebrating it’s one year anniversary on Steam; a year today since the title was released, and it’s been a favorable reception for the Chinese-based developers. They took to YouTube to upload a video celebrating the surprising reach that the title has garnered, reportedly in over 150 countries around the world. The video has a sizeable number of citizens from various parts of the world taking short clips of them wishing Portia a happy birthday, and it’s simply an adorable community memoir towards the funky title.
My Time At Portia consistently hints at technology going horribly wrong at some time in the past, resulting in civilization crumbling. There’s a cult-like church that abhors using remnants of technology, and when technology introduces itself they’re the first ones with the pitchforks and torches.
It’s all introduced and played out with a bizarrely pleasant simile, and the occasional juxtaposition between elements and how they’re introduced and discussed can be a jarring effect. Some elements make next to no sense, such as making friends by beating the snot out of each other.
You can walk up to anyone and challenge them to a duel, with the objective being to knock them out before they knock you out. Whether you win or lose, your report with the challenged will increase, and you can get some of their money by winning. It’s like a friendly mugging. You haven’t lived until you’ve finished a pleasant date by roundhouse-kicking them square in the jaw as the town cheers you on.
Seemingly benign design choices abound in this adorable title, but it absolutely will leave some players wondering what in the world the developers were thinking when they fleshed out some in-game mechanics.
My Time At Portia has since successfully released on all primary platforms after their successful launch on Steam: the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 all get to practice domestic violence as a dating tactic. The PC version does host a wide assortment of mods that allows users to tone down a lot of the odd mechanics that exist, although some might argue that it’s those strange mechanics that make the town of Portia worth visiting in the first place.
