Staxel

I'm going to lead with this game's positives: its map is really awesome, and in general it's really pretty -- although they should tone it down with the wildflowers just a bit. It's charming for about an hour. Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. On paper, Staxel aims to blend the "romanticized farm life" genre--all the homey touches and NPC interaction--with the "explore, terraform and craft in a block-based world" genre. In execution, it *technically* covers these bases, but fails to develop any of its systems to the point of justifying their existence. The farming feels anemic because the only real restrictions you deal with are time and money; there's no stamina or hunger to worry about, although the NPCs have at least become somewhat less wooden as of the Friendship Update. The exploration feels similar, as the world is smallish and largely devoid of anything meaningful to discover. The crafting... well, let me tell you about the crafting. Your first construction project, as dictated by the (mandatory yet unhelpful) tutorial, will be a barn. To build the barn you need to dig large chunks out of the landscape to collect stone and dirt, scrounge cash for mortar and a special crafting station--which the craft shop does not include for public use for some reason--chop down the trees for wood, saw the wood into lumber, saw the lumber into FINE lumber (goodbye trees), scrounge more cash for nails, dig up more stone... or just skip most of that crap and disassemble an abandoned (or occupied, who cares!) house to repurpose into a barn. The best way to deal with the utterly overwrought crafting system is to skip it entirely. Then there's the multiplayer, which by most accounts is too unstable to bother with. As it's in-dev these things may yet improve though my review will be cemented as-is now, and I worry about the game's future as it's only had about 1.5 significant content additions since its January launch and the rate of news posts has already dried up.

Im in love with this game. Imagine being able to create the landscape like minecraft but have relationships with the villagers and do farming and quests. Thats essentially what this is all about. It runs pretty well on low end hardware which is nice and also supports multiplayer. My only complaint is that (at least in MP) its very very buggy. Quests cant be completed quite often and once this happens with a villager you cant do a thing about it (it has a console and admin commands but it wont help). Despite its problems its really fun to play and I've had a blast!

Solid mechanics, very enjoyable, my daughter too fell in love with it. Unfortunately GOG version is not updated, and I had to buy 2 licenses on sale for Steam. That's why I removed a star to an otherwise very cool and relaxing title.

Pros: = A visual style that I like better than "Minecraft", as far as "voxel" style graphics, go. = A cute little open-world game that's bright & colorful. Cons: = No option of gameplay involving weapons (of various types) and dungeons to head into for combat. (Like "Stardew Valley" has.) = Only 3 playable races?!? (Can't there be more, later on?!?) = Limited replay value. Close, but no cigar, in my opinion.