Pixelshire Isn’t Just Your Typical Stardew Valley Clone, It’s Also an RPG Sandbox Game

When players see a pixelated farming simulator game, most players immediately think of Stardew Valley. Any other game that remotely resembles Stardew Valley will get compared to it; it’s just a fact of life at this point.

So, when a game like Pixelshire comes out, which is a pixelated farming sim, it’ll always have a hard time differentiating itself from the iconic Stardew Valley. The thing is, pixel farming games don’t have to always fit the same criteria and include the same core elements as everyone else.

That’s exactly what Pixelshire has done. It’s strayed away from the typical formula just a bit with minute differences here and there. I’d like to talk about those differences in this article.

Pixelshire’s Life Sim Sandbox Freedom is Its Biggest Pull

After completing the first few objectives, one thing caught my attention – the ability to terraform land. I was thinking about where my house is and whatnot, but I ended up having the ability to choose where I want my house to be, and I immediately thought of how I could transform my surroundings to make my dream house.

I always wondered how Stardew Valley could improve with more space and freedom, and in Pixelshire, that’s exactly what you have.

You can create your farm, build a pond, have an elevated area for your cooking table, and much more. Your imagination can run pretty wild already, as you are limited by your creativity and well… the space in the town.

Discovering new areas and meeting new NPCs makes it a bit more immersive. Met a new character you like? You can become their neighbour!

Pixelshire reels you in more and more as you progress through the game with more exciting features. There are so many things to learn right at the start of the game. The tutorial tasks themselves might even take you an hour or two to finish and get used to.

After playing around with the journals and books, you’ll also notice Pixelshire has a massive skill book page.

Pixelshire’s Surprising Talent Tree System Holds More Potential in Future Content

Pixelshire has an impressive talent tree system for its core skills: farming, woodworking, mining, cooking, fishing, brewing, magic, and combat. Each tree has several perks that can improve your overall quality of life. They even have a secret perk locked behind the game’s romance system.

While the system looks like a lot to take in, it is relatively simple, depending on what you want to improve on.

Pixelshire can easily expand this system going forward, especially if they add more features to the game, like tailoring. The future is bright for the game, but they really have to improve the clunky controls and the player’s experience, like having to click on icons while opening the radial wheel instead of hovering over one side to equip a tool, which is almost the whole point of having a radial wheel.

The game is still in its early stages, so there’s room for a lot of improvement, but the depth is already there, especially for cozy gamers who want something a bit different from Stardew Valley’s Pelican Town.

If you want more cozy games to try out, you can check our list of the best cozy games on Steam in 2025.