Crafting games could learn something from My Time at Portia
https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/15/18182446/time-at-portia-crafting
My Time at Portia might seem like familiar territory. It has all the farming, crafting, relationship-building, mining, and monsters you’ve seen in other farming and crafting sims. But where it sets itself apart from Stardew Valley and its ilk is not only in its charm, which it has in spades, but also in how developer Pathea Games streamlined some of the genre’s biggest time wasters.
Before the game delivers its twist on the formula, it treads some common ground first. After I created my character, I set off to claim an old cottage that was bestowed upon me in a town called Portia. As is often the case with these types of games, it’s up to me to restore the aging home to its former glory, improve the lives of the town’s residents by taking up odd jobs and slowly piecing together the potentially post-apocalyptic subplot.