Staxel, Early Access Watcher Stream
0Disclosure: This game copy was bought by the reviewer.
"Hold-off: An attempt at a Jack-of-All-Trades genre binder with cute voxel graphics, but little in the way of fleshed out gameplay. World feels empty, small, and void of interaction/flowing animation."
I will get this out of the way now: I never played Minecraft. It never appealed to me, but the lack of boundaries and free reign are a set of freedoms I can understand. Staxel is in a mixed between random quests given out by citizens and a lack of any real story. You are given a tutorial that explains basic workings then let off the leash to explore the island and interact with your town folk. You can build up the town by request of the citizens, farm for some extra gold or demolish everything in sight just to get an easy paycheck. This last part ruins any form of economy as some plants give about as much as a couple of butterflies without the need to wait for them to grow. New citizens arrive if you build houses for them, you can raise farm animals if you build the needed building and buy up necessary items from the shop if you prefer not to build everything. It is understandable given the couple of seconds it takes just to make certain items and the price tag to buy the numerous (pointless really) stations that require one step to another. Placing and clearing terrain can be monotonous as well given the need to click every single time instead of holding to hit multiple times (instead uses a charge to clear items in blocks before you).
It also sticks to a day and night cycle that forces you to fall asleep at a certain point, but unlike the game everyone is comparing it too, you have no stamina bar to restrict the amount of actions you can take.
No voice acting, severe pop in issues, some sound problems and it did crash once or twice later on. The multiplayer also reduces the amount of starting items (which is getting fixed soon), but this is the only part of the game that I can see anyone buying it for. My recommendation is fairly limited due to the redundant nature of the present item list and relatively small world. If you are looking for something like Minecraft that has more emphasis on farming and plan to only play it on Multiplayer, then I would wait for a sale. Other than that, just get Minecraft and download some farming mods. The visuals do look cute for the cat though.