Terraria in space, and a procedurally generated universe. What’s more to ask for? Oh yeah, there’s now an actual campaign!
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Title: Starbound
ESRB Rating: T
Developer: Chucklefish Games
Publisher: Chucklefish Games
Price Tag: $14.99 on Steam
Release Date: May 26th, 2016(Re-release)
Game Engine: *Unknown*
Available for these other systems: Mac, Linux (PS4/XBox One versions TBA)
Number of Players: Single, Multiplayer Co-op
Genre: 2D Action Adventure
Game Features: Earth is destroyed, and the player is the only thing that can stop it from destroying even more worlds. Beam down to the planet surface and hunt for resources, while also defending themselves from hostile alien creatures, humanoid or monster.
The weather is also their enemy, depending on the planet type. Fierce rains cause flooding (with acid rain causing damage as well as pools of acid to form), while asteroid storms will kill the player in one hit.
Story: Waking up from a good rest on Earth, the player attempts to get to his graduation ceremony to be part of ‘The Protectorate’ (an intergalactic peacekeeping organization) and get their hands on their own Matter Manipulator. During the ceremony, Earth gets fucked by an unknown alien threat. The player is forced to abandon the planet, using a derelict spaceship.
Now stuck in another system with the FDL Drive damaged(but the teleporter is still intact), the player is forced to beam down to the nearby Earth-like planet below them in hopes of finding someone or some thing to unravel the clues as to what happened (and most importantly, how to stop it from claiming more worlds).
Main Character: The player character (you). The player can create a customizable character based on one of six different alien races(including Human), and can also choose their sexual orientation.
It’s then up to the player to follow their destiny, or do nothing and act like this is just another Terraria level(but without the floating eyeballs and zombies at night).
Side Characters: Esther Bright, a former Protectorate who is located at ‘The Ark'(no, not Noah’s Ark). She’s the old lady who does her best to help the player on their quest to stop the horror, that could take even more worlds.
Enemies: Depending on the the type (and difficulty) of the planet, there are three types of enemies; flying, spitting(or firing a projectile), and sprinting ones. Some enemies use more than one ability.
Combat/Health System: The player has a wide variety of weapons to choose from. Daggers, swords(1 and 2 handed), staves, throwing weapons, and conventional weapons such as pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, and grenade launchers. All ballistic weapons use Energy as ‘ammo’ to use.
As for the health system, the player can heal themself with Salve, Bandages, Medical Kits, and even syringes. If the player dies, they lose 10% of their Pixels(the currency of the game) and teleport back to their ship. This can be especially frustrating when the player could be down in a mine and dies.
The player can also make Racial Flags that serve as teleport markers, allowing the player to get to these specific places (useful for Colonies). They can also be named to whatever they wish.
Maps/Levels/Chapters: This is up to the game’s generator, as the planet surface (and the galaxy) is procedurally generated. Never expect see the same generated planet, or the same galaxy as the player’s last save.
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What I liked;
-It’s Terraria, with an actual story. Plus you don’t have to build anything. You can just focus on the story.
-The /admin command can be your best friend in getting through really brutal areas of the story, for it keeps enemies from killing you.
-The game has Steam Workshop support, with mods that can make the game more fun for a lot of players.
-Doing the main questline (finding artifacts) feels(to me) of Spore’s Space Stage’s EP of having missions.
What I didn’t like;
-Checkpoints don’t exist, which is really bad for quests (you die, the quest resets).
-Multiplayer mode starts to lag really badly after 30 or so minutes of use.
-Side quests get boring after awhile. It’s only four quests, which are recycled by all races (“go here and kill this thing”, “go here and kill this thing and escort this person back”, “find this person and escort them back”, and “grow these things for me”). The first three are literally copies of themselves, but in different variants.
Final Opinions/Thoughts;
Despite the frustration of being beamed back to my ship when I die, or the major lack of side quest types, the game is actually pretty good. It has that Terraria flavor, while also not being Terraria (the lack of floating eyeballs tapping your roof trying to get to you at night, and the sound of zombies banging on your doors).
The game also doesn’t feel focused on building a base and having NPC slaves to keep the baddies off you. It feels more of an adventure, especially beaming down to a planet for the first time. That itch to explore kicks in.
Don’t get me wrong — Terraria is a good game in its own right. It has that really good soundtrack. But Starbound has more weather effects than Terraria, such as having a planet with heavy rains, watching the rain go nearly sideways into your base (and end up flooding it).
Things like that, give Starbound a nice touch. The true bread and butter (for most people that I’ve spoken to) is building Colonies on planets. Mainly because you can create a really nice town using Colony Deeds with just one person moving in. And they give you rent every half an hour.
I dunno. Starbound just feels more.. lively compared to Terraria.