My Time At Portia leaves Early Access with a new trailer

Cheery crafting sandbox My Time At Portia has escaped from Early Access today. The full game is available now, and there’s a launch trailer to give you some idea of the shenanigans you’ll get up to when you take up residence in the disconcertingly happy seaside town. Take a gander above.

Launch trailers aren’t usually all that informative, but My Time At Portia’s covers just about everything that goes on in the Harvest Moon-inspired sim. There’s plenty of crafting to do, a town and world to explore, dungeons for fighting in, people to date, festivals, weddings, a zeppelin that occasionally drops a shower of gifts—you’ll be busy.

It’s irrepressibly chipper, which might end up grating, though I found the tone and aesthetic to be exactly what I needed when I played it in Early Access. Portia itself is a quirky little town with a colourful cast of residents. They've all got their own routines, jobs and families, and you can marry one of them if you fancy. I remember wandering into town one rainy day to find all of them sporting umbrella hats, which tells you everything you need to know.

I wasn’t quite convinced by the crafting system when I last played. There’s was far too much standing around. Almost everything I was tasked with constructing needed a bunch of components crafted and resources refined first, and then another chunk of time had to be wasted waiting for the finished product. While I waited, jobs piled up, but I couldn’t tackle them because I couldn't use my machines. And feeding them the required resources involved quite a lot of gathering grind, to boot. Between the waiting around and the busywork, my holiday in Portia started to get a bit frustrating.

That was an early game issue that I suppose could have eventually been tackled by making more machines, but it was enough to make me wait until it left Early Access to take it for another spin. Despite the crafting issues, however, I had enough fun to make it worth a second look.

Here are some My Time At Portia tips to get you started.

My Time at Portia is out now on Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Humble Store for £25/$30.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.