Starbound Preview

By: Blake

Starbound, an upcoming game being developed by Chucklefish, the Indie game developers most notably known for their game… um well they have none, but don’t let that push you away. This game started off as a kickstarter-like project announced in February 2012. The genre of Starbound is a 2D side-scroller adventure RPG sandbox. Essentially there is a storyline within a randomly generated sandbox world.

At first glance, this game looks strikingly (and I mean strikingly) similar to the game Terraria, also a randomly generated 2D sandbox world originally released in 2011. Upon googling the similarities between the games you will find Starbound forums with people typing out a series of incoherent gibberish basically saying “no it’s not a terraria wannabe, it’s gonna be like 500 times better!”. While if you dig deeper you will find that Starbound has many artists and developers that were a part of the Terraria team. Terraria was developed by company “re-logic” while Chucklefish is developing Starbound, which seems to be their first game. This being their first game is very impressive due to the massive following the game already has. The game has not even been released and it has gained over one million dollars in pre-orders and what I assume are donations. Anyway, back to Starbound’s gameplay. 

Exploration seems to be key according to the Starbound official website. The concept of many different planets to explore will keep the game interesting and different, but don’t think that exploration is the only thing to do. Claiming a planet as your home planet, traveling in your space shuttle, and improving your weapons and items are just some of the many gameplay mechanics involved. While the main gameplay mechanics have been announced, chucklefish says there is “a plethora of unannounced features yet to mention”. While that has been all the information I have gathered gameplay-wise, there is a daily blog post on Starbound’s official website informing us all on the state of the game. The official release of the game has been said to be “2013”. No date or even month has been given, while they have given some before, they have all been wrong. They are certainly not rushing the game, which is a good thing. The platforms Starbound will be on include Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Starbound team has said that a console version of the game is dependent on the success of the PC versions, which is basically saying they hope it becomes big enough for a console version. 

You can pre-order Starbound at their website, the minimum price being $15, which includes the steam key, Beta access, as well as the Starbound Soundtrack. While Chucklefish's previous deadlines are as reliable as Mojang’s, the game will be out this year. I am looking forward to pre-ordering this game and seeing how the game grows into the next big Indie game success.

For more information and to pre-order the game go to http://playstarbound.com/