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Thanks to the Windows Game Pass, it was a good week for electronic gaming entertainment for me, where a good week can be defined as actually making time to play games.  Much of it went to My Time at Portia and The Outer Worlds, which are both fantastic games in their own way.  My Time at Portia does not have quite as high of production values as The Outer Worlds, though Team17 is no wet-behind-the-ears indie developer either.  [Actually, My Time at Portia was only published by Team 17, it was developed by Pathea, based out of Chongqing, China, but it's complicated, I would say this was a somewhat multinational made game.]

In My Time at Portia, they managed to work outside their usual staple of making yet another Worms game in order to make a lovely open-world farming craft-em-up with a cute Western, mildly super-deformed art style that reminds me a bit of less-lumpy, cleaner-looking Rugrats.  The setting is notable for being an upbeat post-apocalyptic game, a bright and cheery world that bounced back from generations spent underground following the end.
The gameplay is immediately familiar, much like a third person 3D Harvest Moon game, you steadily upgrade your farm by earning money while performing odd jobs for people.  Much like Harvest Moon games, there is a stamina mechanic that prevents your builder from doing too much per day.   In some ways, My Time at Portia is more similar to (personal favorite) Rune Factory, with an RPG leveling-up and combat mechanic involving defeating monsters overland or in ruins.

There are many differences, too.  In My Time at Portia, your character is considered more of a builder than a farmer.  You are focused primarily on constructing things from your workshop in order to meet request commissions from citizens in the town of Portia.  Only some of these requests might be plant or food related.  Your next door neighbors are farmers or ranchers, but you are more of a generalist.   Of course, the entire game is played from an over-the-shoulder 3D view, and that is a pretty unusual feature, but at least a few games in this genre have done it.
[Image] The monsters who wander the world are strange cute personifications, like something out of an old cartoon, which is extra weird when you kill them en-masse for resource collection.  I guess they're mutants or something? Though My Time at Portia is an unusually-well-featured example of the genre, I find the character design to take a little effort to wrap my head around.  Though there are some unusual standouts (like old people, cats, children, and a civilized huge bear) most of the characters were designed like Team17 was shooting for appealing to both a young adult and older demographic by making about half of the characters look like one that could pass as the other.   The result is a lithe body with exaggerated features.

Consequently, the character design features to establish gender get into an argument with the rest of the design.  Because the characters feature mild super-deformation, larger heads and dainty hands, things get a bit wonky where breasts and thighs are concerned.  Compared to their more exaggerated body parts, the proportions are reasonable enough but, compared to the scale of the less exaggerated parts of their bodies, many of the characters are quite well endowed.  Certainly more than is typical of your average young adult, especially when the 3D modelers tried to implement the designs they were given.  If you look closely, the polygons fairly strain to pull off a satisfactory medium!
[Image] To be fair, the nurse in uniform in these 2D designs is much more voluptuous than anyone else in My Time at Portia.  Her polygon features modest jiggle physics. This is more of a difficulty they had reconciling their art style than simple misogynism.  In fact, My Time at Portia is quite liberal in its sexuality features.  You can marry any gender regardless of what your character's gender is.  They even thoughtfully provided a flamboyant metrosexual spouse choice.  Though, like your character, he seems to swing both ways.  Is it my imagination, or does the first choice for male protagonist's voice seem to have a bit of a gay lisp going on?  I do appreciate that Team17 was not afraid to support the LGBT community, but it was a little sloppy not to provide a non-binary gender option.  Simply casting all spouse choices as bisexual begets the impression that sexual identity a choice, which is generally not appreciated.  But no doubt this was done because they wanted to let players do whatever they want.  You can even cheat around a bit between lovers, but might need to pass around an, "apology bear," to mend hurt feelings if you are caught.  The romantic flexibility in the implementation was probably done to try to satisfy more Kickstarter supporters, but this is not without some consequence in terms of being a bit tasteless. 
Regardless, I appreciate Team17's attention to detail in the implementation of romance.  Typically games like this involve saturating potential spouses with gifts until it unlocks cutscenes and evential marriage, but My Time at Portia goes further.  You can even go on embarrassingly European-style dates!  Including odd couples selfie posing or loafing on beach chairs holding hands.  Ugh, get a room, you two!  Not that there's actually a "Netflix and chill" option for a date, things remain PG rated at worst, but the romantic activity choices are still more detailed than any game I can readily recall. 
I have dwelled too long on the romantic aspects, as that is just one aspect which is unusually well supported for games of this genre.  In this way, My Time at Portia is fairly amazing.  It has an incredibly robust crafting system, good plot expansion system, fair decoration system, foraging system, extensive holiday events, seasonal terrain permutation, social networking system (of which romance is only a part) combat, RPG progression system, and so on.  Overall, My Time at Portia is a lovely life simulator game with a great deal of... if not depth in all places, at least breadth to its mechanic.
As for The Outer Worlds, looks like I need to give Obsidian Entertainment more credit: they released a bug-free, great game.
I played about 8 hours of The Outer Worlds so far, and found it to be a real class act in the same formula, but with a unique theme of Retro Sci-fi meets Western influences.  I understand it's not quite as big as Fallout: New Vegas, with a projected playthrough time of 12-40 hours, but that is pretty much the only significant flaw I feel the game has. 

I have to admit, to some extent I would rather play My Time at Portia, but my tastes in gaming are esoteric sometimes, and I acknowledge that many more people would be blown away by Outer Worlds.  Maybe I will write more about it next week, when I have had a chance to play it some more.

Development / Geldon's Boring Real Life
 
A large part of the reason why it was such a good week for entertainment for me was because I had struck a balance of productivity in my free time that left me feeling I could do so relatively guilt free.

Unless this was a coincidence, it seems I have found an ideal day job schedule to comfortably commit my free time to my projects.  The schedule was two days on the day job, two days off, one day on, two days off, then back to two days on.  That's just enough pressure in the middle there to prevent me from blowing through days off feeling like I could, but not so high pressure that I end up fretting or self-medicating with aimless browsing.

It turned out to be foolish to try to split my time down the middle between gaming and making games, alternating every hour, because it was a struggle every time I had to alternate.  Instead, I have found it is best commit to working during what I call "the most productive hours of the day," some time between when I have woken up and the mid-afternoon slump.

That alone was not enough, because I have often spent those hours just failing to get myself to start.  It turns out that the secret was to commit to doing pomodoros during those hours.  By default, a pomodoro is 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off.  The 25 minutes on is a pretty good amount of time because I feel pretty confident I can handle it at first.  If it is going to drag, it will usually be about 10 minutes in or so, and then I can just look at my watch and notice I only have to persevere another 15 minutes.  That perseverance is good practice.  The first pomodoro is always the hardest, but after that it gets easier.

I have decided to commit to at least 4 pomodoros worth of effort on my days off, with 8 considered an ideal.  More than that, and I fall outside of my productive mental mindset.  Less than that, and I do not feel satisfied that I have worked hard enough.   Furthermore, I want to try and commit to at least 1 pomodoro on the days that I work 8 hours at the day job, probably closer to 2 pomodoros if I end up scheduled closer to 4 hours that day.