If I could give a middling/okay review I would; I'll give Staxel a thumbs-up because it does one thing very, very well.

You could easily be forgiven for thinking that Staxel is primarily a farming sim. After all, it's tagged as such, and most of its description on the store page talks about running a farm. When you start a new game an NPC gives you the "So you're here to take over this old farm?" spiel that typically opens a farming sim. But Staxel's farming mechanics are about on par with Harvest Moon... the SNES one. The NPCs aren't terribly vibrant; they have an extremely small pool of dialogue outside of their quests, their routine is identical every day, and they never go to sleep or participate in festivals or even comment on those festivals.

"Okay," you ask, "So why are you giving it a thumbs-up?" And that's because of what makes Staxel different - the voxel nature of the game. This is where Staxel shines because you have total and complete freedom over the voxel-based world to reshape it as you want, and the game is designed to get out of your way and just let you do that. You get all the tools necessary to do so early on. The game explicitly tells you, if you use the wrong tool, what you need to break a particular block. There are periodically resetting side areas that let you gather wood and stone without messing up the main area. You can eventually just order any block you have previously picked up or examined, so you'll never run out of a really specific material you want.

And all the things that seem like shortcomings of the rest of the game help prop up the building part. The fact that the shops never close means you can buy materials at any time, any day. The farming and cooking mechanics are easy and simple, but they primarily exist to make it really easy to get ridiculously rich, so you can sink that money into building materials. And you'll need a LOT of materials.

Because the big thing about Staxel - the one that should be put at the forefront, before the "Farming Sim" stuff - is that you have to build everything. Every new villager's house, every new business, you are tasked with building them. But this isn't Dragon Quest Builders where you get a blueprint. Instead you get a sign, and the sign denotes a 3D space, and you just have to place a certain selection of items within that space. You have -total freedom- otherwise. You can follow the style of the town, or get really fancy. You can build beyond the marked-out bounds, so long as you have all the requirements within it. You can even dismantle and reconstruct existing structures, as long as they meet the requirements. This, THIS is the big focus of the game, because you will sink the vast majority of your money into it. It takes complete, full advantage of being a voxel game, so if you want a voxel builder that encourages you to be creative, this is the one.

That said, if that's -not- what you're looking for in a voxel game, then you should probably pass on Staxel. But if you want a chill, relaxing game where you can build elaborate and fancy voxel structures with loose requirements, Staxel provides.

If I could give a middling/okay review I would; I'll give Staxel a thumbs-up because it does one thing very, very well. You could easily be forgiven for thinking that Staxel is primarily a farming sim. After all, it's tagged as such, and most of its description on the store page talks about running a farm. When you start a new game an NPC gives you the "So you're here to take over this old farm?" spiel that typically opens a farming sim. But Staxel's farming mechanics are about on par with Harvest Moon... the SNES one. The NPCs aren't terribly vibrant; they have an extremely small pool of dialogue outside of their quests, their routine is identical every day, and they never go to sleep or participate in festivals or even comment on those festivals. "Okay," you ask, "So why are you giving it a thumbs-up?" And that's because of what makes Staxel different - the voxel nature of the game. This is where Staxel shines because you have total and complete freedom over the voxel-based world to reshape it as you want, and the game is designed to get out of your way and just let you do that. You get all the tools necessary to do so early on. The game explicitly tells you, if you use the wrong tool, what you need to break a particular block. There are periodically resetting side areas that let you gather wood and stone without messing up the main area. You can eventually just order any block you have previously picked up or examined, so you'll never run out of a really specific material you want. And all the things that seem like shortcomings of the rest of the game help prop up the building part. The fact that the shops never close means you can buy materials at any time, any day. The farming and cooking mechanics are easy and simple, but they primarily exist to make it really easy to get ridiculously rich, so you can sink that money into building materials. And you'll need a LOT of materials. Because the big thing about Staxel - the one that should be put at the forefront, before the "Farming Sim" stuff - is that you have to build everything. Every new villager's house, every new business, you are tasked with building them. But this isn't Dragon Quest Builders where you get a blueprint. Instead you get a sign, and the sign denotes a 3D space, and you just have to place a certain selection of items within that space. You have -total freedom- otherwise. You can follow the style of the town, or get really fancy. You can build beyond the marked-out bounds, so long as you have all the requirements within it. You can even dismantle and reconstruct existing structures, as long as they meet the requirements. This, THIS is the big focus of the game, because you will sink the vast majority of your money into it. It takes complete, full advantage of being a voxel game, so if you want a voxel builder that encourages you to be creative, this is the one. That said, if that's -not- what you're looking for in a voxel game, then you should probably pass on Staxel. But if you want a chill, relaxing game where you can build elaborate and fancy voxel structures with loose requirements, Staxel provides.