My Time at Sandrock News

[h3]Howdy Builders,[/h3]

We're thrilled to announce that the long-awaited full release of My Time at Sandrock is finally arriving on September 26, 2023! Prepare yourself for the epic adventure of Sandrock's captivating story, available on Steam and Consoles.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In this full release, all single-player quests will reach their thrilling conclusions, unraveling the secrets of Sandrock. We've also gone the extra mile to ensure that romanceable NPCs have their quests implemented, allowing you to embark on heartwarming storylines and experience beautiful love stories.

Additionally, the new sandbox multiplayer will be available right from the same day, where you can team up with friends and explore the world of Sandrock together!

We've planned dedicate time to optimizing the game, enhancing performance, and ensuring a smooth gameplay experience in the full launch version. Stay tuned for future announcements where we'll delve into our optimization goals and highlight the actual improvements we've made.

We are even more excited and would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of you for your unwavering patience and support. To express our appreciation, we have prepared a special in-game item gift exclusively for our Early Access players. Stay tuned for further details on how to claim it, as we will be announcing the specifics very soon.

Leave your questions in the comment or review we'll check and address them! Thank you, Builders, for being an integral part of our amazing community.

[h3]Together, let's continue making Sandrock an extraordinary place to embark on thrilling adventures![/h3]



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Howdy all,

We're thrilled to announce My Time at Sandrock is participating in the GWB Game event!

Sandrock, as a captivating simulation RPG, takes players on an unforgettable journey through a post-apocalyptic world. In Sandrock, you assume the role of a skilled builder who is responsible for rebuilding the city of Sandrock, which has fallen into economic ruin. Along the way, you will encounter over 30 unique and charismatic characters, each with their own story to tell.

Sandrock provides immersive gameplay. You can customize and expand your workshop land, create machinery, grow crops, raise animals, and many others.

With its captivating storyline, immersive gameplay, and countless opportunities for adventure, Sandrock is a game that offers something for everyone. Whether you're a fan of simulation games, RPGs, or just looking for a new adventure, Sandrock is definitely worth checking out.


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[h3]Howdy Builders,[/h3]

We want to clarify the multiplayer situation a bit, as it’s apparent that our messaging wasn’t too clear in the previous article. In light of this, we planned another multiplayer beta test in June.

First, we didn’t arrive at the decision to take out the old story mode in a vacuum. We took into consideration player feedback, player expectations, internal feedback, and development schedule when we arrived at the conclusion. Below, we’ll go through each category in more detail.

But let us answer one question first. Why didn’t we just develop it as a co-op mode of the single player story from the start? Well, multiplayer didn’t start development until we’re two years into single player’s development, so from the start of development the code base was not optimized for multiplayer. Here, our somewhat inexperienced multiplayer team made an informed “mistake,” they took a look at the single player code and decided that the logic, especially around story and NPC interactions was too complicated to replicate in multiplayer unless we pretty much remade the game. Of course, internally, we also asked “Stardew Valley did it, why can’t we?” In the end, we decided since our team wasn’t sure that we can pull it off in the schedule we were tracking, it’s better to err on the side of caution for our first effort. Thus, the decision was made to make multiplayer its own thing, literally developed as a separate game with a separate code base with its own gameplay.

Now, development was proceeding. We did several beta tests, and in those tests, we presented a version of multiplayer that told a somewhat compressed historical story of Sandrock. It contained characters from across 70 years of that history. But since we wanted to let players date known single player characters as well as historical ones, the timeline became very convoluted. Some players hated it, some players were okay with it, but most agreed that it could’ve been better. Other player feedback included not liking the way we focused all the gameplay on the Commission Guild; not liking that when there was a story, it was skin deep; as well as the general linearity of it all. Basically, the design had issues.

As the months went by, there was a lot of pressure building on us to deliver the EA version of multiplayer. From the open beta tests, we realized the direction we were going in just wasn’t meeting expectations and ran a high risk of not being completed by the launch of the game. The game design didn’t really offer any replay value and we had a hard time maintaining the same quality of story as single player. It became obvious that for what we set out to do, a unique multiplayer story that lasts 30 hours, we weren’t capable of inputting the necessary resources to make it happen in time. We needed to find a gameplay loop that players will like and replay and be able to do it by later this year. We made a hard decision.

The good news is that we are retaining all the systems. You might not know this, but our multiplayer systems are more akin to an MMO, where players can play together and have their own inventory and interactions in an always live server. It’s pretty much the most complicated you’ll see out of our genre. The multiplayer team worked very hard over the last couple of years on these. So going forward, it’s more of a rearranging of all the systems that we have to attain a more fun game.

And it will be a more fun game. The gameplay loop is now revolved around 4 players building up the town of Sandrock through all means necessary in a more sandbox type of gameplay. You’ll gain points whether you’re building, or fighting, or dating, or even playing mahjong. And all the points will help with leveling up and opening more gameplay options. Building houses and completing tasks will also allow new NPCs to move into town. We’ve even added dynamic leveling so that single players can also play this smoothly. We feel this is actually in line with most of the feedback we got during the betas. This is the version you’ll see in the next beta test coming soon and the version we’re aiming to complete for the final release. As for the historic story and old characters, such as Howlett and Email, we’ll probably explore options to somehow tell players that story later on.

In conclusion, we know a lot of you are disappointed with how long it’s taking for us to put out the multiplayer version, and we’re right there with you. We do apologize for that. We could’ve done better in a lot of the things. Going back to an earlier point, in retrospect, based on our knowhow now, we probably should have just bitten the bullet and built multiplayer in the same code base as the single player and went for coop single player from the start. We would have succeeded as well. But we must live with our decisions and do the best with what we have. All the components are there though, so who’s to say we don’t come back to that later down the road?

Sincerely,
Pathea




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Howdy Builders,

We're releasing a new hotfix patch to address some issues and improve your gaming experience!
🛠️ Here's what's included:

[h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed Tour De Rock causing players to get stuck
  
• Fixed tabs disappearing in the Encyclopedia when viewing items
  
• Fixed unskippable CGs caused by enabling 'Hide' Yakmel cart CGs
  
• Fixed an incorrect painting in the Blue Moon Saloon
  
• Fixed potential loading errors during the Winter Solstice
  
• Fixed errors when switching terrains
  
• Fixed missing production queue in the Cooking Station
  
• Fixed the issue of incorrect placement of wedding rings on hands
  
• Fixed the issue of incorrect quantity display in the assembly diagram of the Signal Triangulator
  

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For more reasons behind the multiplayer change, you can read this:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1084600/view/3694686097148743251?l=english


[h3]Howdy Builders,[/h3]
It's been a while since we last touched on the multiplayer development, but it's finally time for us to share with you what we have been working on. We have diligently evaluated and refined the direction based on the valuable feedback you gave us in previous tests. After taking a step back and evaluating our available resources, we have charted a new course to deliver the multiplayer experience. As the full launch of Sandrock draws near, we are ready to discuss the new multiplayer design philosophy, exploring its highlights and the challenges we have faced. Join us, and let's take a look at what you can expect from the multiplayer experience.

P.S. Feel free to engage with our content in your preferred format—watch the video or read the text, whichever suits you best.

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[h3]About the Story: Good News vs Bad News[/h3]
Here's the good news: The new multiplayer is all about collaboration and working with your team to make your workshop run as smoothly as possible. Get ready to unleash your strength as builders to complete multiple commissions at the same time. Let the chaos of managing a workshop with multiple people begin!
Not so good news, we evaluated the story of the previous multiplayer version, and we didn't think that is good enough for players. Due to our limited resources, we've decided to remove the story completely. We've made a tough decision to focus on the workshop mode instead, but we believe that this new experience will open new doors for freedom and creativity for better collaboration.

[h3]Town Quests: Good News vs Bad News[/h3]
It's good for everyone if someone in your team takes on a town quest, you can just sit back and relax while still enjoying the benefits of shared experience and gols. Anybody a fan of lazy shortcuts?
But potentially bad for you if you're the hardworking player, your blood, sweat, and tears will be shared, and everybody will happily enjoy the shared rewards. What a bunch of freeloaders, am I right?

[h3]Public Storage: Good News vs Bad News[/h3]
And finally, we want to hit on the public storage we've added to the multiplayer. The public share boxes are the extra space beyond your backpack and personal storage boxes. Welcome to the magic of shared resources and easy-peasy material access for crafting.
But be warned, here is the bad part: your personal items might become hot commodities among your friends. Watch out for those cheeky pals who just can't resist a little "borrowing"!

The next multiplayer open test is being planned out as we speak! We'll have more news about multiplayer for you then, but we need a bit more time to collect those developing assets and give our video editors a break. And just as a reminder, the multiplayer will come as a free mode on the full release of My Time at Sandrock.



If you like Sandrock, please leave a comment or review on our Steam page or our Discord community. We'll improve Sandrock with your help.

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