All posts tagged in Sandbox
Feb 9, 2023
Raise and Breed Bees
While we’re on the subject of honey and beekeeping this week (check out Honeymancer if you haven’t), let’s take a look at APICO! Leave your boring city job and return to Port APICO, where you grew up, and return to your beekeeping roots. This cute pixel graphic game is a laid-back beekeeping simulation with breeding, some exploration, and you’ll even learn how to conserve bees.
The APICO islands feature a set of lush, beautiful environments for you to explore. Each biome has its oven breed of bees for you to discover. Gather resources to use in your studies or crafting. Make and sell Apicola (honey) and other beekeeping items you will discover. Play fun beekeeping minigames, without the stings! More importantly, breed different cross breeds of bees and discover 30 new species to help repopulate the APICO islands with. Plus, uncover the secrets of the islands while you explore.
APICO supports up to four players in online co-op, so grab a friend or two and get to beekeeping together! And if you run out of game content, the developers suggest modding the game, though it seems they’re still adding updates to the game. January 30th, 2023 saw the addition of butterflies! Either way, it sounds like APICO can be as simple or as versatile as you’d like to make it.
Available Now!
APICO is available now on pretty much all platforms. You can find it on Steam, Itch.io, the Humble Bundle store, Epic Games, Utomik, Nintendo Switch, and Playstation! You can also try out the demo on Steam.
You can also check out Bee Simulator for more bee fun.
- Jan 26, 2023
Design, Grow, and Nurture Your Garden
Welcome to Garden Life, where you are in charge! The goal of this realistic sandbox game is to build the garden of your dreams. There’s no magic or miracles to it, though, and it’s all up to you to plant and nurture your garden. Use the appropriate techniques, the correct tools, your creativity, and a little bit of elbow grease to create a flourishing paradise.
Take the time to learn the needs of your plants. Each one will need different types of care, like fertilizer and pruning. And don’t forget to water! You’re not alone in Garden Life, either. You’ll be able to fulfill the requests of your friendly neighbors, who will reward you with new tools, fun decorations, and even new plant varieties. Take those new plants, and the ones you’ve grown, and experiment with them. Create new hybrids and beautiful variations to further beautify your garden.
Garden Life implements a grid-free placement system, so players really are in control of the design of their gardens. There’s no snapping to place, and fighting against a grid system to create your vision. It also uses a specially developed procedural growth simulation technology. Every plant in your garden is unique, but will also easily adapt to its environment.
Release Date To Be Announced
Unfortunately, the beautifully crafted Garden Life has no publicly available release date. You can add it to your Wishlist on Steam, though. Developer Stillalive Studios also lists the game as being developed for Xbox and Playstation consoles, though the store pages for the game aren’t available yet.
For more gardening fun, check out A Garden Witch’s Life or Witchy Life Story.
- Jan 11, 2023
Garden and Customize Rooms
In Garden In, players will get to garden to their heart’s content. The objective of the game is to just grow a variety unique and beautiful plants. Pick from a variety of different pots, throw some soil in it, and plant a seed. Each plant will require different things in order to grow, like clay or rocky soil, but each one wants your time, love, and some care in order to grow and flourish.
You can also create hybrid plants. Take a larger hybridization pot, put in two compatible seeds, and see what you get! Try to discover all the different hybrid plants to fill out your herbarium. Plus, you’ll get to customize your plant rooms to fit your personal aesthetic and mood. You have control of the colors of the room, and the backgrounds can be changed, too. Arrange your plants, change the color palette, and set whatever mood you want for each room.
With no timelines and no quests or goals to complete, Garden In! is the perfect game for the casual gamer. It’s also a good game for the creatives looking to just relax.
Coming Soon!
Garden In! Will be available on Steam in about two weeks, on January 26th! You can add it to your wishlist to receive an email when it releases.
For more gardening fun, check out Garden Paws, A Garden Witch’s Life, or Strange Horticulture.
- Nov 16, 2022
Relax and Build
City building games certainly aren’t a new concept. We’ve even covered a few of them, like The Colonists, where you control a fleet of robots who do your bidding. Harvest resources, refine them, and use them to build your city. There’s also Before We Leave, which has you rebuilding settlements on the surface of the earth and eventually colonizing space. You’ll have to manage your resources, build, and harvest crops. SimCity is also a popular one where players have to make certain decisions to keep their citizens happy while building up the city. Gourdlets stands slightly apart from the rest.
Gourdlets is a cute city builder by developer AuntyGames promises to be even more relaxing. There are no tasks to complete, no resources to gather or refine, and no citizen requests to meet. It’s simply a delightful little sandbox city builder perfect for those who want the creativity of a city builder without the pressure of tasks and requirements.
You start the game with a railroad, a small piece of land, and a bench. It’s up to you to grow the land and make it the city you want to see. You can lay down several types of terrain, like grass, sand, dirt, and snow. There are trees, flowerbeds, and even fences to use for decoration. And of course, there are a few different homes you can place. Design and build the wonderland of your dreams in this charming pastel sandbox, and watch as the Gourdlets move in and live their little lives. What will you create?
Available Now
Gourdlets is available now to play for free on itch.io. It is also coming to Steam, but currently has no release date available. You can add it to your wishlist, though. You can also follow the developer, AuntyGames, on Twitter for updates, or read the comments on itch.io for information on updates, as AuntyGames is active there too.
For another city builder, check out Biz Builder Delux!
- Oct 16, 2022
Explore And Find Your Way Home
For all of you who loved the opportunity to create chaos in Untitled Goose Game, and those who just love cats and their antics, this game is for you. Play as a cute black kitty with a big personality and a lot of curiosity in Double Dagger Studio’s Little Kitty, Big City. You’re lost in the big city and have a choice. Do you explore this new and wonderful place, or do you try to find your way home?
Take your time to explore the city. Create havoc and leave some chaos in your wake. Dive into trash cans, knock potted plants off their ledges, and so much more. Meet stray animals on the streets and become friends with them. Find different adorable hats to wear. Little Kitty, Big City is a tiny open world sandbox game, so how you play and explore is up to you!
As if the game description isn’t cute enough, check out the official trailer below. It’s adorable on its own and makes me wish the chaos-creating kitty adventure game was available now!
Coming Soon
Unfortunately, there is no release date yet, and as their Steam page says “Cats don’t have deadlines.” However, Little Kitty, Big City will be released on Steam and Itch.io when it does come out!
If you haven’t heard of Untitled Goose Game, check it out here. It’s a fun time for all. And for more kitty fun, check out Snacko.
- Nov 12, 2019
This stealth game with a simple premise and slapstick humor created by House House, has recently become an internet sensation, memes and all. I have been following along Untitled Goose Game’s journey since 2017 and have been preparing myself to honk at, annoy, and steal from all of the townspeople. Thanks to the developers, I was able to play a copy on the Nintendo Switch and I was not disappointed.
The idea for the game started out as a joke and has evolved from there. It seems that everyone can relate with similar stories of their encounters with unpredictable geese. They don’t seem too menacing, but approach one the wrong way and expect to be chased. There’s just something comical about how they waddle and House House has captured the goose’s movements and actions quite realistically.
You’re a Mischievous Goose, Not A Malicious Goose
Even though the goose’s antics never get too out of hand, some people were hesitant on being horrible to lovely people minding their own business. However, to a certain extent, the game allows you do decide on how to accomplish goals, via a to-do list, so you get to project some of your own personality into the goose. The classical background music also cleverly reacts to your steps and antics which made me feel encouraged to follow through with my plans. Well, not so much plans as let’s just throw everything everywhere and see what happens.
Every character is faceless and there is no dialogue but they’re still so emotive. They’re all just living out their daily routines until you come by and give them a hard time. I actually enjoyed returning to the same areas again and seeing the townspeople putting their items back in their place and fixing things I might have broken. This way I don’t feel as guilty because nothing you do is permanent. No harm, no fowl. It also allows for you to do things over and over again, like a true sandbox game.
You can and should purchase Untitled Goose Game on the Nintendo Switch here, or on Epic Games Store here.
- Nov 9, 2019
Little Big Workshop is an adorable simulation and strategy game developed by Mirage Game Studios and Published by HandyGames (THQ Nordic division). The game released on October 17th, 2019 on Steam which you can purchase here, for PC or Mac, for only $19.99! Manage your workers, stations, machines, and create awesome toys and items to expand your factory. Moreover, it’s almost as if you get to manage little workshop elves, Santa’s helpers, which makes this the perfect game to play this holiday season!
About Little Big Workshop
Imagine a magical factory, appearing right in your living room. A carefully planned masterpiece, where diligent workers throw together anything customers want. Rubber ducks and dressers, drones and electric guitars, scooters and other wonderful goods can be created from many different materials and sold for hard cash – cash you invest right back into your factory to get more machines, more workers and grow your business. In Little Big Workshop you become a factory tycoon!
Real Factories – Made FUN
You are the Big Boss and it’s time to take charge of your very own tabletop factory. Organize the factory floor, manage your workers, purchase machinery, and design efficient production lines – all within the time-limit and to your client’s satisfaction!
An Open-Ended Sandbox-Experience
Take it easy, it’s a sandbox-experience where you think, ponder and poke at things until you get it to work the way you’d like. Supply products to clients and an ever-changing market, as you produce over 50 unique product types, built from multiple parts and pieces – all of which can be created with different materials and production methods. No two factories should ever look the same.
Tiny Hands, Big Dreams
Start out with just a small workshop and expand to a desk-filling factory. Unlock ever fancier machines, add even more production methods, and most of all, more room. Soon enough you’ll be running multiple production lines, producing hundreds of advanced products each day, and watching with joy as your cute workers do the actual work.
Key Features
- Four unique industries fully simulated
- Focus on practical problems, not on values, economics, or logistics
- Organize all steps of the production on a blueprint
- Factories grow as you unlock more desk space
- Day/Night-cycle with simulated working time
- Take care of your workers! Work them too hard and they may turn on you
- Cute model-town art-style
In the mood for more holiday shopping? Check out my article here: Nintendo Switch Perfect Gift Guide.
- Sep 23, 2019
We’ve been following Staxel for quite some time now, which you can see in our article about the demo here. Plukit, the developers, were kind enough to give myPotatoGames a copy of the full-release on Steam to review with the new updates you can read about here. If you’re looking for a great sandbox game to spend hours and hours building and farming, look no further! Feel free to relax and explore a plentiful island, and build a wonderful town that villagers will want to move into.
Character Creation and Tutorial
You start with naming your farm, creating your character, and going through your settings. I was really glad to find out that you can switch from first-person view to third-person. With third-person you can also choose to make your character more transparent if you find they are in the way. A great new addition is Selfie Mode where you can take a moment to view your character from the front. This is a most welcome change as I was a little bummed at first to create my character and dress them up, only to not be able to see what they look like ever again.
Meeting Farm Fan and Azila
Talking to Farm Fan is basically your tutorial as she will guide you by showing you around the town and around your farm. You get your choice between a cat and a dog as your first pet when asked by the tavern keeper Rowan. Farm Fan will show you how to place your new pet house and bowl for food. She will even show you how to plant your first crop. Afterward, you’re sent over to Azila to learn how to build your first barn. I would have appreciated a lot more hand-holding for this part because I had no idea what to do even with recipes.
Building Your First Barn
If you’ve played Minecraft before, then you should be pretty familiar with how to build stuff in this game. However, as a newcomer to voxels and using building blocks, there was a lot of trial and error for me. Thankfully, you can use your hammer to smash and restart without losing your materials. I decided to look at what the other pre-existing buildings looked like and got an idea of what type of blocks to use. I was able to smash them up a little to see what they’re called and what’s underneath. However, this gave me a little anxiety because I was unsure if I could replace everything correctly.
Base Requirements
All buildings have a signpost in front of them (or totems) that you can view and see what the base requirements are in order for that building to be considered complete and function properly. I’ll save you a significant amount of time and money right now by telling you that you don’t necessarily need to build on top of the display lines, just within them. Also, you can do the bare minimum to start out. Sure your barn needs a roof but as long as you have four corner posts it will hold up, rather than having it completely closed off. You can also save yourself a few blocks by making windows and leaving an entrance as farm animals cannot go through doors.
I’m not sure whether this is intentional or not but your cows will wander as far as possible even with the small fences all around your farm. Thus, they will not know to eat out of their troughs and will become sad and not produce their regular resources. Therefore, you must either build a much taller fence around their barn or put blocks under the small fences for more height.
Taking Care of Animals and Crops
As far as I can tell, animals will not die if you forget to feed them. The only drawback is that they will not give you anything. For example, you cannot milk your cow if they are hungry. Your pet will also occasionally give you gifts such as furniture or clothes. In addition, your cows will poop and you can use that “splat” to make manure for your crops. You’re welcome. Manure will help speed up the growth period of your crops as the out-of-season ones will wither at the end of the month. Make sure to water them every day (you can buy sprinklers) unless it is raining out. It’s actually really adorable to watch it rain block-y raindrops. Eventually, I would like to be able to purchase pigs and chickens but I’m focusing on making money.
Shopping and Foraging
The most notable feature of this game, compared to other farming simulations, is that there is no stamina drain. Therefore, you can farm, build, forage, catch bugs, and fish to your hearts content! A few tools will be given to you by villagers. You only need to go buy a pickaxe, scythe, and a bug net from the General Store. Animal food, crop seeds, furniture, and more can be found at the General Store whereas blocks, recipes, stations, and building materials can be found at the Building Store.
For a few specialty items that continue to rotate, go to the supermarket in town and find a few merchants there. This is where you can sell your items such as bugs and flowers to start earning Petals (currency).
You’ll be spending an enormous amount of time chopping down trees, breaking stone, and digging up dirt. To save time with the trees, you can make sure to chop them at the bottom of their trunks so that the whole tree will fall apart. I also created myself a quarry with steps where I can easily access all the stone and dirt that I want that’s buried underground. I’m unsure if stone will respawn but trees need to be replanted. Furthermore, I noticed that when you are wacking some stone, that the further away it is, the quieter the sound effect. This is an impressive feature.
Getting and Befriending New Villagers
One of the things that frustrate me the most about Staxel is how expensive everything is versus the amount of money you can make. To have new villagers move into your town, you need to talk to the mayor to open a quest. Building my first home for Emilia was very expensive (about 20k) and very time-consuming. To be fair, I built her a very massive home. Several hours later after filling her home with the required furniture, I spoke to Emilia and got some rewards. She then gave me a signpost to start building her a Patisserie as she is a skilled baker.
As far as other mini-quests go, you can pick up items that have been lost, such as socks, and return them to their rightful owner. If you don’t know who they belong to because you haven’t spoken to them first, go to Rowan and ask him about some rumors. The villager will reward you with items in return. Continue to build your relationship with these villagers by talking to them, completing quests, and giving gifts. Eventually, they will ask you to complete specific Friendship Quests. Become best friends and they can even move into your house! There is no marrying or romance in this game but all villagers are unique and interesting to speak to. Just don’t steal from their cash registers!
Calendar Days and Festivals
Pay attention to your clock and transport yourself home when needed. It’s always best to go to sleep when your display shows the moon which I’m assuming indicates that it is midnight. You can wake up tired and sluggish which only gets worse throughout the day. This is a status debuff which you can get from not only sleep deprivation but other things as well that I still need to discover. There are 30 days now in a month with added festivals and events.
Seasonal Events
During the latest Easter event you could find Easter Eggs around the island and receive chocolates or candies from them. Eating a green candy for example gave me a speed boost buff. Once I start cooking with stations I’m sure the prepared food will not only give you a better resale value and make for a great gift to a villager, but can also give different status buffs.
Rare foraging items and building materials have been added to the game such as star bits that fall from the sky at night and that are used to upgrade your tools. Other examples are the blue crystals you can mine from a cavern. The cavern is one of many new islands called Portal Islands that will appear in the town during select days. You can check the calendar mounted on your wall at home to see which days you can access them. The calendar also displays when you can do the monthly festivals. There are three festivals to take part in: Fey Masquerade, Pumpkin Festival, and Snowdust Faire. I’m unsure why there isn’t a festival in the summer but these ones add a welcome change of pace.
Fey Masquerade
The first festival you can take part in is the Fey Masquerade in the Spring. A giant pink castle will appear and you will be able to talk to the Fey Queen to undertake a quest. You must run around the island looking for rare mischievous fairies (which will appear red instead of blue). They will be hovering above flowers and can be caught using a bug net. The queen will give you back the items the fairies stole from her such as building blocks for you to make repairs to the castle.
Each room will also have requirements that need to be fulfilled such as needing certain furniture. It is not at all obvious that you need to read the signposts in front of each and every room and start rearranging furniture between them. I ran out of time to complete this festival but now I know what to look for it might go a little faster next time. I also don’t think anything is stopping you from keeping all of the furniture to yourself.
Controls and Menus
The journal in your menu is very useful in remembering which quests need to be completed if you forget. In your inventory you will find all of your recipes but I liked how you don’t necessarily need to have them to create things. You can experiment with different materials on the building stations and see what will come out of it before going through with it.
The Map
If you get lost, you can open your map which gives you an overhead view of the entire island. You’ll see a face icon of all of the villagers and your animals with their current locations. You can also see if there are any star bits around. Moreover, you can speed things along by walking your character toward those icons without having to exit out of the map.
Storage and Inventory
The controls are fairly simple when you get used to them and you can easily cycle through your inventory with the items you have in-hand. You cannot expand your inventory but I later found out that you can place all items on bookshelves and inside of crates. You can even put these storage items outside for easy access to food and tools. Build yourself a tool shed even as there are no limits to your creativity! Putting items down improperly however will have those said items disappear after a while.
Speaking of placing items on shelves, it looks adorable but it isn’t very functional in stores. Sometimes it can be hard to find what you are looking for as you have to hover over the items but I’m told you can later buy a catalog. What would have been helpful here is to be able to zoom-in to the shelves and not have to worry about other people walking in front if you. People can also be in the way when you are trying the build stuff on your stations.
Staxel offers all the customization and exploration you could possibly want. A few extra festivals would have been better but there are so many things to do in this game that you can play forever. If you want to experience this game for yourself, head to Steam here.
