Staxel

« Staxel provides a fun, zen farming and life simulator that replicates the visuals of Minecraft, and the premise of Stardew Valley. There is much to uncover and it could be everyone’s new favourite farm to milk cows, grow crops and build abodes, whilst making friends along the way. »

« At $24.99, I think Staxel’s priced a bit high, and I’d wait for a sale. But multiplayer can be lots of fun, playing with friends both locally and online. If you find the premise and presentation appealing, Staxel’s a cute, chill, but familiar title. It’s a game that can bore or relax depending on your thoughts about Minecraft and farming/new-guy-in-town simulators like Harvest Moon. »

« Despite its fiddly interface and a farming side of things that’s a bit underwhelming, Staxel’s open-ended nature and creative potential make it an enjoyable outing in blocky rural life.At the very least, it shows the potential in this idea of a life sim block-building game: even if it doesn’t get the balance quite right, creative freedom and the laid-back, satisfying rhythm of farm life go hand-in-hand. »

« Staxel offers some fun gameplay, but it retreads a lot of familiar ground in the process, and nothing about it stands out as unique or exciting. Fans of the genre might like it, but don’t expect any innovation here. »

« Staxel delivers a mediocre mix of block-building, farming, and foraging without providing any substantial drive or reward for your efforts. In other words, you'll be better off picking up one of the many games that Staxel was inspired by instead. »

« If you are looking for a charming farming sim, you would probably be better looking down yonder Stardew Valley. »

« Staxel exemplifies the old saying, “jack of all trades, master of none.” With the stellar competition on offer, a game really needs to excel these days to make an impact in what is becoming a very crowded genre. Unfortunately, Staxel, with its frustrating systems and the uninteresting cast, makes it hard to want to stick around and enjoy the variety of gameplay loops on offer here, and it’s difficult to see anybody but the most dedicated fans of the genre feeling any different. »

« Staxel is basically a cross between Animal Crossing, minecraft and Harvest Moon but unfortunately does neither any justice and is held back by many design oversights such as a poor crafting experience, and poor mission structure. Sure, the game is kinder cute for a voxel based sim but its just got too many hangups which just make the game less satisfying and more of a chore to play. Core issues include lack of automation for building blocks, and you'll be endless clicking over and over once you start getting quests to build museums or shops which could require hundreds and hundreds of blocks, and since it requires a click to craft each block, it gets boring and tiresome FAST - it needs automation for tasks like this. Second up, is the terrible mission structure, especially the daily quests which the villagers will give you such as find socks or some other item, and that will spawn the item literally anywhere on the island and doesn't give you any clues or visual aids to help period, these types of daily quests are near impossible to complete. Crafting is a problem too, because its not intuitive and that doesn't help the game's case. Most of the time, you'll have no idea and that is when frustration can seep in, and couple that with a lack of any significant tutorials although for the most part the basics are fairly obvious but once you get deeper in the game where multi-crafting is required to complete missions, it gets more dicey. Staxel needs a lot more improvements, especially the mission structure because befriending the characters is key to expanding and you are completely stuck without levelling up your friendship levels, which is a lot harder than it sounds and the game never gives you any information that is required, and most of the times its based around the near impossible fetch quests that spawn something without remotely giving you any clue, or direction any remote information to find it. Overall, Staxel isn't a bad game, its very chill and relaxing but ultimately lacking any decent structure sure it has some good ideas but never really lives up to any potential and frequently misses the mark, it has very little to aim for - no upgrading tools or really end goals. »

« Playing Staxel you can see the thought process that produced it all around. Take the general visual style of Minecraft, though in this case a bit more refined with voxels, and mix it with some flavor from the farm sim camp ala games like **** to make a game that would be akin to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of family-friendly goodness. That was, no doubt, the idea. In execution though? It’s nice and actually looks pretty good, but there just isn’t much of a “soul” to any of it and nothing that really makes it stand out. Also, being honest, farming activities are simply clunky in a 3D space and the need to be precise can be a bit of a drag, so that Zen-like satisfaction loop you get in the typical top-down cultivation sims also suffers a bit even if you enjoy them. While there’s no doubt it manages to present the familiar in a different form, so there may be people who’ll enjoy the ride, the lack of anything of substance that’s new and exciting makes it easy to pass on. ****/2021/09/mini-reviews-september-24th-edition.html »

« The people responsible for "Staxel" have made a good conversion of the PC version to the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to the storyline, we always have a common thread and gradually get all the basic elements explained. The tasks are varied and even small players can only have fun with the help. The developers give you a lot of freedom and you can keep yourself super busy. Fans of the genre and those who have a Switch will love the game. »