The developers of the My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock crafting and farming sim games are adding another destination to the series with the upcoming My Time at Evershine. Like the others, it's begun with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Unlike the others, this one has absolutely buried its funding goal: Evershine has received pledges totalling $1,706,201 (and climbing), far surpassing its $200,000 goal, with 19 days left in the campaign.
Evershine continues in the same universe as its past two games, and will cast players as the governor of a new settlement at the edge of the Free Cities. As in the first two games you'll collect resources, contribute to the settlement, and woo the locals. Evershine is also adding a building system for constructing your settlement from the ground and fully voiced characters.
The My Time series kicked off at a time when the available options for games like Stardew Valley were extremely slim pickings. Though I don't consider it one of the best of the bunch now that we have so many more choices—I've always found them a bit grindy, janky, and cheesy—but they're a favorite for a lot of people.
Here's proof of that: Evershine has earned nearly $2 million from backers and hit its $200,000 goal in just 35 minutes. Back when Portia was being crowdfunded I remember being nervous it wouldn't quite clear its goal (it did) as I was anxiously awaiting any new farm sim to play. The second game, My time at Sandrock, cleared its funding goal pretty quickly too and wound up landing a total of $524,770 from backers, well past its $100,000 goal. That still doesn't come close to what Evershine is pulling.
I don't want to pin that all on the new art style, but it's hard not to notice how Evershine has ditched the more cartoony characters from Portia and Sandrock in favor of more realistically-proportioned characters. "We’re aiming to have the highest quality assets in this genre," Pathea says on its Kickstarter page. "Our ultimate goal is to make the My Time series a must play series in the cozy/simulation RPG space."
Pathea actually gets pretty transparent near the bottom of that campaign page, explaining why it's turned to crowdfunding again. "My Time at Sandrock cost a lot, like $12 million a lot, and still counting, we expect Evershine’s budget to be somewhere in the ballpark as well," it says. "Having extra funding at this early stage of development also allows us to plan for bigger and better things, or just to have enough in reserve to fix things when they go sideways."
Pathea also details a list of things it thinks it didn't quite nail in Sandrock—the multiplayer, house and factory building, a few underbaked romances—and says those are areas it wants Evershine to improve upon.
It will be a while before we see the fruits of that vision though. There is already an Evershine Steam page where its release date is still TBA.
