Biggest fuckup of the game is that you don't get a rolling catalog of pieces to create and build from. You get a small area to build on, and you start from scratch each time. I get that they did it for the sake of balance, but once an area is cleared - they really should have allowed you to expand your town borders and unlock the rest of the building recipes you've already gotten up to that point.
There's an online sandbox area you can just build shit freely in, but I never messed around with it much since you don't build a town (or sprawling metropolis with skyscrapers - depending on your autism) for little NPC peoples to fuck around in.
It'd be cool if they expanded on the Minecraft ripoff bits by adding in a bit of SimCity/The Sims ripoff to it.