Pathea Games has something of a “type” when it comes to the game it likes to make. My Time at Portia and the multiplayer-friendly My Time at Sandrock were almost close to one another at the brass tacks level, with players taking on the role of a builder to craft necessary items and buildings as part of a wider effort to enrich the nearby community, all while engaging in familiar life sim RPG activities and a bit of survival-lite gathering and crafting. They’re adorable titles with some charming towns and an overall cozy vibe.
However, not even Pathea can rest on its laurels and repeat the same trick a third time, which brings us to the next game in the studio’s series: My Time at Evershine, which makes some drastic updates to its gameplay mechanics. Now instead of being a builder for a town, you’re a governor who directs how the whole town expands.
I recently had the opportunity to sit in with Pathea’s VP of Publishing and Business Aaron Deng, Game Director Zhi Xu, and PR Director Ivan Karadzhov to see this all-new entry in the My Time series in action and answer a few questions – let’s dig in!
As you can see in the images provided, the first and most striking thing that’s new with Evershine is the visual style. This new game still keeps a stylized graphical presentation, only now the characters have more humanoid body proportions instead of the chibified variants of the first two titles. The devs tell me that this new design shift mostly sprang from the players themselves, as a lot of fan art of characters were done in this style, and when players were asked if that should be adopted for the new game, it was met with resounding agreement.
This drastic change holds hands with the aforementioned big change in gameplay. In Evershine, players are tasked with establishing a new Alliance settlement from a simple campfire site to a thriving city while pushing back against the villainous Duvos Empire.
Specifics on just how gameplay mechanics operate weren’t explained in the preview as it’s still in early development, but there was talk about governors needing to decide what buildings to build, making sure citizen needs like hunger and comfort are maintained, and distributing tasks to other characters, on top of exploring new areas and getting new resources. The whole game is hoping to hit familiar beats for series fans while generally being built with the intention of drawing in new players, especially those who enjoy RPGs – no prior knowledge needed even as the game’s story takes place two years after Sandrock.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a My Time game without some social layers on top, and Evershine will also deliver on that front with the aim of having between eight and 10 romanceable companions. The game is also promising 40 hours’ worth of story content.
In a first for the series, the entire game campaign can be played in co-op multiplayer for up to four players, with the game host effectively controlling the flow of the town’s progression while things like resources and money will be shared among everyone. Another major addition is the inclusion of mod support from the very start for both single-player and multiplayer games, though how that specifically will work isn’t locked down yet.
The word “adventurous” was used a few times to describe Evershine’s gameplay, which led me to ask whether that would mean that this game will be a bit more combat-focused. In that regard, I was told that expansion of territory will be similar to Portia and Sandrock in that there will be new enemies to fight and even some dungeons to plumb, but this time around there are some more defined antagonists from the very jump when compared to previous games in the series, so “adventurous” is more about the game’s overall vibe.
Overall I got the impression that Evershine is still in the early phases of its creation but not so early that the concepts and design aren’t settled in, which is probably a good thing considering that Evershine is going to be opening a Kickstarter on September 24th with a relatively modest goal of $200K. Pathea Games has successfully Kickstarted and launched three games already, including Sandrock, Portia, and Planet Explorers; its success with the earlier games propelled Sandrock’s haul of more than half a million dollars on the platform. But naturally having a trailer, pretty pictures, and a gameplay plan isn’t enough to accept every crowdfunded dollar, so Pathea plans to provide more reveals over the coming months.
Personally speaking, I find myself both eager to see Pathea swing for some new fences with this game while still holding my horses until more complete gameplay details are shared, so I’m trying to temper my expectations. Still, as a casual fan of the My Time RPGs, I am far more intrigued by Evershine’s ambitions, and since it’s multiplayer-ready from the get-go, that immediately means I’ll be following the project with much more interest than before.
Thanks so much to the folks at Pathea Games for chatting with us!
