VoxelMaker (Wii U) Review

VoxelMaker's biggest strength and weakness is the fact that it throws players right into the game without much fanfare. They are greeted to a grey screen in which they can get building as soon as possible. Tutorial screens are present, but they're all very brief, encouraging the menus to be explored. This is good because it motivates reading and truly figuring out the mechanics. It rewards patience, as models are slowly learned how to be built, edited and saved.

This is also bad, however, because it alienates those less enthusiastic, or even the more apprehensive types. If someone goes into this because they have a mild interest in 3D model design, they could be turned off from the concept entirely because of how unfriendly VoxelMaker is coming out of the gate.

A game's job should be to get people to want to play it, but this has so much potential to turn someone off. It's ugly, the text is pitifully small, at times it can be disorienting, and it simply isn't friendly to beginners.

The problem with all this, however, is that it feels specifically made for beginners. There is nothing truly complex about the modelling process. Once it is figured out how to navigate the clunky and overwhelming menus, everything begins to go smoothly, but the most likely person to stick with it and get to that point is someone who has done 3D modelling before, making VoxelMaker inherently counterintuitive. The models that can be made are very blocky in nature, as well, with no option for more realistic modelling, only further emphasising its status as a beginner's introduction to 3D modelling.