Pages

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Starbound, Please Take My Money


Check this out:
Starbound begins with you fleeing your homeworld in a space shuttle, just as it’s destroyed by an unknown enemy. With nothing to guide it, the escape pod shoots into space without direction, becoming hopelessly lost in a sea of stars. As luck would have it, the space shuttle makes contact with an abandoned space station and an adventure begins that will take you hurtling across the universe. Starbound contains both quests and story driven missions, buried inside its vast sandbox universe.
I liked Terraria enough.  I mean, the amount of fun I had playing it was worth the cost, but I only sunk about a dozen hours into it before getting bored.  Okay, I know, "only" a dozen hours of fun.

I liked exploring, crafting, sandboxing, all that, but I wanted something more: direction.  I would have loved some sort of narrative, but even just a tiny bit of direction (besides the few hints NPCs give you) would have made a big difference to me.

At first glance, Starbound looks like Terraria with a story.  Do more digging though, and it becomes clear it's more like Terraria on steroids with a story also on steroids.  In fact, it looks to be adding such a layer of depth that comparisons to Terraria are almost silly, excepting fundamental similarities in the art style (and some of Terraria's old team is working on Starbound).

You can inspect items and plants in the world.  There looks to be a lot of randomness in the generation of everything in the game.  Distinct varieties of flora and fauna.  Planets that have their own unique look and lifeforms.

Starbound looks like it mixes everything I liked about Terraria with the primary components I found it wanting.  And it involves space exploration.  By all means check out the web site.  Everything new I learn only makes me want to play Starbound even more.

As much as I find myself trying to prevent the accelerating passage of time, I can't keep myself from wishing summer were over so I could be playing Starbound.  Really, really wishing.

David

No comments:

Post a Comment