Staxel

i went into this game expecting some sort of combination of minecraft, stardew valley, and animal crossing. i was sort of right; staxel feels like it took a lot of inspiration from those games, but i don't think it managed to incorporate aspects of those games together without sacrificing playability. it allows you to build freely in a minecraft sort of way, but every time i wanted to build a big project, i felt like i was being interrupted by the stardew day-by-day progression and having to go to sleep unless you want to just pass out. also, specifically with quests that transport you to different places, i wish the day-night cycle paused so i could properly enjoy the story.

the only storage system available is bookshelves. i didn't like it much at first, but honestly, it became pretty convenient being able to physically see all of the items right in front of me. the lighting in the bookshelves gets weird and some items are bigger or smaller than others in the display, but it's not a terrible system of storage imo, especially since you can stack items up to 999 (excluding eggs and some items that can only be a stack of 1). it is pretty tedious to reorganize and rearrange stuff, but that's something i enjoy doing, so it didn't affect my enjoyment too much.