My Time at Evershine's crowdfunding has reached $1.7M and its developer hopes it will become a'must play series' in the cozy/simulation space.

My Time at Evershine, the next installment in the My Time at Portia series of crafting and farming games, will be released by the developers behind My Time at Sandrock and My Time at Portia. It began with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, just like the others. This one, however, has surpassed its funding goal. Evershine, which has 19 days left to run, has pledges totaling $1,706,201.

Evershine is set in the same universe of its previous two games and casts players as the Governor of a new settlement on the edge of the Free Cities. In the same way as the first two games, you will collect resources, contribute towards the settlement and woo locals. Evershine also adds a building system that allows you to build your settlement from the ground up, as well as fully voiced characters.

The My Time series began at a time where the options for games such as Stardew Valley was extremely limited. Although I don't think it's the best now that there are so many choices, as I've always found the games a bit grindy and janky--but for a lot people, they're a favourite.

Here's proof: Evershine raised nearly $2 million in funding and reached its $200,000 target in just 35 minutes. When Portia was crowdfunded, I remember being worried it wouldn't reach its goal. (It did). I was eagerly awaiting a new farm sim. My time at Sandrock also cleared its funding goal quickly and ended up with a total of 524,770 dollars from backers. This was well beyond its $100,000 goal. This is still not close to the amount of money that Evershine has raised.

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. Pathea's Kickstarter page states that it is aiming for the highest-quality assets in this genre. "Our ultimate aim is to make the My Time Series a must-play series in the cozy/simulation space."

Pathea is quite transparent at the bottom of this campaign page. It explains why it has turned to crowdfunding once again. "My Time at Sandrock was expensive, like 12 million, and we're still counting. We expect Evershine to have a budget somewhere in that ballpark," it says. "Having extra funds at this early stage allows us to plan bigger and better things or to just have enough in reserve for when things go sideways."

Pathea also outlines a list of areas that it believes Evershine should improve on. These include the multiplayer, house- and factory-building, and a few undercooked romances.

It will take a while to see the fruits from this vision. Evershine Steam has a page with a TBA release date.