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Pathea: Overcharge, overpromise, underdeliver
Let’s start with giving you an idea of Pathea’s business model. Here’s what it boils down to:
1. Announce an exciting new game with super ambitious scope you will never deliver upon.
2. Run a Kickstarter campaign where you get people to pay 10 times what your game is worth in exchange for some FOMO items, and you don’t have to share with Steam a dime.
3. Release it in a half-baked state, then squeeze as much money as possible through DLC.
4. As soon as sales slow down, abandon the game.
5. Repeat step 1.
6. …
7. PROFIT!
The self-inflicted and manufactured issue of content disparity
Much like Portia before and Evershine after, for Sandrock Pathea decided they need to have 20+ NPC and most of those need to be romanceable. Naturally, providing enough content to make all those romances worthwhile is highly unrealistic. So instead of limiting romanceables to only those characters they can support Pathea made a 1000 IQ decision to cherrypick a handful of characters to get much more love and attention than others – according to personal whims and superfan feedback.
This has been promoting a toxic environment in the community, with a new player having to open a wiki to find which of the characters got actual quests and basically anything more than a pure technical ability to “date” them; and some players feeling themselves “second-class citizens” when their NPC of choice wasn’t lucky enough to become the devs/fan favorite.
Instead of striving to resolve this issue, Pathea has embraced it, has given it official designation (“cores” and “non-cores”) and has been aggressively monetizing it – realizing the potential of selling content injections for the characters their players are so attached to. This DLC is a great example of that.
Wait… how do they get away with this?
Pathea’s marketing strategy revolves around long-term buildup of the community of loyal superfans, while games themselves are designed around heavy cross-promotion – from story that spans all of the games (encouraging you to play them all) to straight-up in-game ads, Pathea really wants you to stick around as a loyal customer.
Their target audience is concentrated within highly sterilized and censored mediums, that being Discord and their subreddits. Ridden with toxic positivity, these mediums are designed as echo chambers where fan devotion is nurtured, developers are perpetually kept in a warm bath and where the image of Pathea is carefully maintained as a company that “can do no wrong”.
Can Pathea do wrong though? From abandoning their first game Planet Explorers, to woefully underdelivering on multiplayer for Sandrock (the Kickstarter stretch goal no less), to abandoning Portia in favor of Sandrock and now abandoning Sandrock in favor of Evershine – yes, yes it can. However, if I start going in detail on all those things I won’t make the 8000 character limit. So look it up, if you’re interested.
So, is the DLC any good?
Right, enough talking about the predatory nature of the DLC and how it should have been in the base game. Let’s talk DLC itself.
There is something you should understand about a DLC like this one. Sandrock’s story is incredibly long and bloated, and clearing the game will take you about 100 hours (by a conservative estimate – for me, it was more like 250). Out of the four “core” romanceable NPC Pathea decided to capitalize upon (instead of, you know, adding content for all those other characters they abandoned) two – Logan and Nia – are only romanceable very late in the story. And even for the remaining duo relationship let alone marriage is by no means an early game thing.
Where I’m going with this, is Pathea unironically expects you to do 4 separate playthroughs of 100+ hours each if you are to fully experience the contents of this DLC. There is technically another way to go about it – you could divorce your spouse on your current save and go romance someone else. However, this is a mean thing to do to your favorite character and noone realistically would consider it. And even then – divorce requires jumping through some hoops, like obtaining a rare item.
Aside from that, there’s another factor actively working against this DLC. You’re lucky if you’re both into guys and girls, however if you’re not, you can automatically divide the contents of this DLC by two. This is essentially similar to having to buy a bundle of skins for half of the characters you don’t care about.
Did Cooper bite you? Get to the point already!
Alright, alright, jeez! It’s just that… there isn’t much to talk about.
I’m not doing 3 playthroughs 100-hours each for the sake of characters I don't care about, so I’m gonna only tell you about Nia’s quest as an example. Without spoilers, you go to a place, you talk to Nia, you gather resources (which you’ll most likely have in your inventory by that point in game), you deliver them, you wait till the next day for builders to build some cosmetic stuff, you go to that place again and talk to Nia about it, then share a quick romantic moment. That’s it, that’s the entire quest. Will take you 5 minutes, tops. Narratively, it directly continues what you were doing with this character during story quests, it’s not some new tale, so it 100% should’ve been part of the base game.
That aside? “Core” romanceables now get a new “background” tab, where you get to read 2 short notes (think Skyrim's books), which offer more insights into their background. Also you get to replay their voicelines and rewatch “memories” with them and pick different choices. I’ve no idea why voicelines replay is there, especially since the available lines are based purely on relationship status – so you will get all the lines about having a baby even if you don’t have one yet, essentially becoming a spoiler. It all feels very in poor taste. Like really, Pathea? Selling voicelines?

Verdict
Having played this one, I feel dirty. Like, sure, it’s nice to get more content for my favorite character, but I don’t appreciate my love for Nia being blatantly exploited by a greedy businessman, selling me mechanics and even quests that are straight up not available otherwise.
This "wealth of romantic content" at the rate of $1 / minute feels super scummy, and gives us a glimpse into what monetization for Evershine is gonna look like. After all, these are the devs who almost turned a beloved franchise into a mobile gacha game Project Me – and the only reason they didn’t is because their publisher bailed on them at the last moment.
So yeah, it’s poor value and it definitely shouldn’t be a DLC. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part? This is Pathea normalizing the situation where people are expected to pay $100, $200, $500 on Kickstarter, only to then get an unfinished game where not just skins but mechanics and even quests are sold separately, and which will only be supported so long as this “small indie” company is happy with its superprofits. All while continuing to cultivate a community of people who enjoy being deceived and exploited, and instead of opposing it keep asking for more.