• Price: $6.99 USD (base game: $39.99 for digital, $49.99 for physical)
• Developer: Pathea Games
• Publisher: PM Studios
• Release Date: May 28, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Renaissance PR on behalf of Pathea Games and PM Studios. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

We reviewed My Time at Sandrock and loved it. As if the amount of content in the base game wasn’t impressive enough already, Pathea Games decided to provide players with even more content with its recent free update and new DLC! As per the Steam pages for the update and DLC, they added new features and optimized others. The main draw of the update would be the ability to bring pets into battle with us, while the paid DLC lets us catch “Sandrock” type monsters to add to our parties!

Pets 🐶

There is a nice selection of pets to adopt in Sandrock, from cats to corgis to meerkats and more! (Sadly Captain remains unavailable. For meow?) Once you’ve lured them in with daily gifts and affection, adopting them allows you to bring them into battle by talking to them and selecting “lead.”

DLC

The pets are all precious, but if you want to bring the cute and cool monsters home with you too, you’ll need to buy the Monster Whisperer DLC. I desperately wanted the penguin-husky “Pensky” hybrid, so that was my first stop.

To catch a monster, you’ll need “Capture Meatballs,” which can be purchased from the Boutique Store by the entrance inside of City Hall. There are different quality meatballs that make it easier to capture a monster. You can exchange your Gols for Pet Coins to use on Capture Meatballs and other items like Pet Apartments for your new friends.

If a monster has a pink paw icon, that means you can befriend them. The meatballs are used in a similar manner as guns. You need to throw meatballs at the target until their friendship meter (the paw) fills up. After successfully befriending them, they change from the level they were at in the wild to level 1.

When it comes to actually capturing a monster, I recommend not bringing anyone else into combat with you if you want to keep your target alive to capture them. (Especially because there are shiny versions; they don’t appear in a different color, but there are golden sparkles involved. Shiny versions have better stats.)

You need to focus on strengthening your friendship with each monster as well as their battle capabilities. The higher your friendship levels, the better the perks you get:

Example:

• Friend: Add an extra 20 stamina points
• Familiar: Attack increases by (owner’s level x3)
• Close: Defense increases by (owner’s level x1.5)
• Loyal: Each time a target is KO’d, the owner recovers 10% of maximum HP

Defeating other monsters is one way to level up your companions, but you can also feed them different foods to level them up and increase their HP. When you defeat enemies, you get more Pet Coins to use at the Boutique Store as well as the occasional friendship boost for your party members, of which you can have 3.

There are a few ways to customize your monsters. You can use special items from the Boutique Store to upgrade their quality (=stats), and set their battle tactics to attacking or defending more. Their appearance can also be customized – to a certain extent.

When you choose the “Check” option when talking to a monster, go to the accessories tab to buy and unlock items for your companions to wear (using Gol or pet coins). Each kind of pet/monster has a few preset accessories, and it appears that those are the only accessories each one can use. I’m a little sad about the limitations, but I still love how cute everyone looks!

One definite plus would be the ability to change a monster’s color. (I don’t think we can change the color of the Sandrock pets.) Once you reach a certain friendship level, you can change their color on the accessories tab by clicking the icon below their portrait. Again, this feature is limited, with only one alternative color palette. But it’s awesome that we can have pseudo-shiny monsters, if only in appearance! ✨

The monsters who aren’t in your current party can be put to work gathering resources, but if you want to swap out your current setup you can talk to one of your party members and call the desired monster directly to you using the “Check” menu.

After a hard day of work, everyone goes to bed on your property. If any of them don’t have a bed, that impacts their friendship with you. Apparently you can only put one Pet Apartment in your yard, but multiple in your house. It seems like you have to be more selective with which monsters you tame, considering the space limitations.

I tested a few different features to see what all was possible. First of all, you are able to use the DLC on day 1 in Sandrock. Check your mailbox right away and you’ll receive helpful items for capturing monsters. Once I could move around I went and captured a Yakmel on my first day in a new save file.

Naturally, our animal friends can fight with us in the outdoor environments around Sandrock, but I also wanted to know if we could take our companions with us into the ruins dungeons. The answer to that question is yes, but as I had already finished the game I couldn’t test it for plot-related battles and dungeons. (I’d assume you can, though.)

I think the ability to bring these critters with you will be especially helpful as you play through the game from the beginning. I know I had a little bit of trouble with a few bosses when I played the base game. It doesn’t hurt that the pets and monsters add more cuteness, content, and fun to the game. At $6.99, I’d say the DLC is more than fairly priced and well worth it. I’m still just incredibly impressed with the amount of content and support being given to the game!