새 소식
Vexlands Is A Delightfully Cozy Crafting Game With A Fun Twist
A
Alyssa Mercante
My cutesy pixelated character, clad all in pink, has unlocked a few adjacent hexagons within an otherwise empty map, thanks to some coins she had in her inventory at the start. The newly populated shapes are filled with lush green grass—a bush suddenly pops into one, which she can snag twigs from to build an axe. Then a tree appears, which she can chop down for wood and sell to the merchant who popped in at another hexagonal space.
Vexland’s sole developer, Slovenia-based Primož Vovk, tells me this game is a love letter to 2019’s Forager, the crafting game that regularly spawned resources for players to use to build structures, tools, and more.
Vexlands is set in a cursed land in which you are the only survivor. Expanding the world by buying hexagons (some are more expensive than others) cleanses them of the curse, breathing life back into the land. Different biomes require you to complete goals within them to move on, like in the greelands, where repairing ruins found on an island in the middle of a lake will build a tower, which shines a light across the map that grants access to the desert biome.
As you expand, you’ll discover puzzle-filled dungeons, caves with intricate underground water systems, and much, much more—and since Vexlands is procedurally generated, every unlock is a surprise. Just a few unlocks in, I find a dungeon filled with special items and coins. Moments later, I find my first NPC, Rewardo, who is looking for an item I just found—handing it to him unlocks a skillboard. My first choice in the branching skill tree: an ability that increases my chances of getting coins from chopping down trees. “Good choice,” Vovk says.
I express delight in how much I’ve gotten and accomplished so quickly. “I’m not a big fan of grinding,” Vovk responds. There is a peaceful satisfaction at play here, akin to crocheting or doing paint-by-numbers. Vovk says Vexland is the kind of game you’d want to play after a long day at work, and I tell him I just wish I had it for my flight back. “It’s nice on Steam Deck,” he says.
As you progress through Vexland’s beautiful world, you’ll get the chance to build your own base, complete with farmland, shelters, and defenses. You can rehome chickens to have consistent resources, fish in bodies of water, mine for rare minerals, and catch and display bugs. There’s some fighting, though I didn’t encounter any during my time, and player feedback thus far (Vexlands launches next year, but has had a playable Steam demo for a little while), says it’s pretty forgiving.
After I play around a bit, Vovk loads up a save that he’s been working on for a while. I’m astounded—his base has hay bales and verdant farmland, tons of crafting tools, a dungeon that’s a stone’s throw from his shelter door, and his character is wearing a funny little hat.
These hats are another fun layer to Vexland’s gameplay. Some are just for show, but others serve a purpose: a headlamp on the miner’s helmet helps illuminate dark areas, and a hamburger hat will drop lettuce and tomatoes for sustenance. Gems you’ll find while mining in caves can be added to rings, which can increase your harvesting speed or make your character so big they can destroy boulders.
But wait, there’s more: local co-op will be included with the full game launch in 2026. As someone who often laments the lack of couch co-op games, this delights me. “Cozy chaos” is the term Vovk uses for Vexland’s local co-op, and though I can’t see it for myself during my hands-on, I can picture it: you’re mining together, perhaps in search of a way under the mountain through to a new biome, when someone unlocks a hexagon that houses the boss. Suddenly, what was meant to be a casual mining session has turned into a fight, and someone’s getting blamed for their bad luck.
Vexlands is certainly a cozy game, but there are so many interesting elements and playful twists on the genre that it feels fresh and new. My brief time with it at Gamescom 2025 was a total delight, and truly left me wishing I could play it on my long flight home. It’s out on PC and console sometime next year, and it’s one to watch. Make sure to check out the demo right now.