Starbound Release Date Finally Set

[Steven Bogos]

Starbound Release Date Finally Set

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Starbound is finally coming out of Early Access on July 22.

Starbound [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/starbound?os=%20starbound], the Terraria-esque space exploration and construction game from Chucklefish, is finally leaving Early Access and getting a full release. The 1.0 retail release of the game will hit at the end of this month, on July 22. Of course, despite the big 1.0, Chucklefish is committed to the continued support of the game with additional patches following its release.

"While Starbound will be finished in two weeks, this isn't the end. We will continue to update and support Starboundfor as long as we can. We've got loads of cool ideas we couldn't fit into 1.0 but hope to put into future updates," wrote the developer in a blog [http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/].

Starbound first hit Steam's Early Access program almost three years ago in December of 2013. At the time it was fairly bare-bones, lacking many of the quest and progression features that made "spiritual predecessor" Terraria so popular (one of Starbound's lead developers previously worked on Terraria).

The 1.0 release will come with a full story mode, as well as dozens of improvements to many aspects of the game.

Source: Chucklefish [http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/]

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[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I bought this way back and love it but have been waiting for the full release to actually dive in headfirst. I need it NOW.

 

[Broslinger]

Wow! It has only taken them 4 years for Terraria in space!

 

[-Dragmire-]

I kind of burnt out when I got it[footnote]Played 86 hours.[/footnote] so I put it down until release.

I'm looking forward to seeing the changes that were made since I last played it 2 years ago.

 

[kekkres]

Wow! It has only taken them 4 years for Terraria in space!

I mean honestly it may have started as that but its a pretty distinct beast now from terraria, with a heavy focus on NPCs story and role play, Its barely a sandbox game anymore, its more of an rpg where you can dick around and build notre dame when you don't feel like progressing.

 

[Kajin]

Gonna be honest, they took this game in a pretty awful direction. Felt like they sucked the fun right out of it.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Gonna be honest, they took this game in a pretty awful direction. Felt like they sucked the fun right out of it.

Gotta agree. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Terraria. The progression was sorta off, there felt like there was a ton of stuff missing, building materials were damn near useless since your ship could house everything... I feel like every planet is the same old "Go down, wander the surface, go into caves, do the challenge thingies, then move to the next" with little variants and kinda dumb quests blocking your progression.

They say it's gonna release soon, but have they fixed the fucking GARBAGE frame rates? There's no way in hell a sprite based side scroller should ever hit 5 FPS at any point on a 760. No reason whatsoever

 

[Alar]

I'm not sure I like it as much as Terraria, but I do definitely still enjoy it quite a bit. The story and missions are really fun and the platforming is more challenging and impactful. That and it's fun customizing your ship and your own space, even if people will argue in Terraria you could just build whatever.

 

[Scarim Coral]

First time I have heard of this game, colour me interesting from the trailer. I will add it into my wishlist.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

When I bought the game years ago I was hoping they would deliver the promise of Terraria in space. I'm disappointed and mad at the direction they went. Nothing is like it should be and the focus on completely unimportant things killed any hope I had for the game.

Now I have to wait for Red to deliver Terraria 2.

 

[Dalisclock]

I've played a bit of this game, but I like the idea of it more then I actually like it. Working up to getting your ship fixed and being able to explore the galaxy(starting with pretty much nothing) was fun. Improving my ship, still kinda fun.

Now it's more like.....I'm not really sure what to do or where to go. Also the quests are bugged for me, so completing the next main story quest isn't triggering anything for me. I hope the release fixes this.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I bought this game when it first came to Early Access as I was in the mood for another Terraria-like game. I quickly found buying early access games was generally not a sound idea and decided to wait to the full release to try again. Looks like I will be going back to it to see if the devs made good on the games promising premise.

 

[Fhqwhgod]

I preordered the Early Access and went back to Terraria after 5 hours.
I will give this another chance on full release. I hope it blows me away this time.

 

[webkilla]

Compared to Terraria, I just found the progression in StarBound waaaaaaay too slow. Mind you, haven't played the game in ages - but still.

Having to set up a tree-farm to fuel your coal-fired spaceship? Ya that makes total sense (No)

Or having a hand-phaser-multitool, yet a hand-made copper pickaxe will mine rock faster? Are you kidding me?


IMO the game's main issue is that its trying to be too many things: It wants guns as well as swords... but to balance things, they made the guns really weak. They wanted spaceships and awesome sci-fi stuff, but because of the terraria-roots then you also have to make dirt farms and beds made of straw. A style-confusion.

If it just embraced the sci-fi parts of it - went full "you have a nano-assembler, go nuts" and then let people mess around? Sure, why not.

but instead we get this strange mix that IMO just doesn't work

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I've been looking forward to the official release for quite some time. I can't wait for it to reach version 1.0 so I can once again play it for a few hours, see most of the new stuff, then forget about it once again until the next major update.

I hope this time they introduce better options to skip the early game tedium of getting your ship working. This is fine in games like Minecraft or Terraria, but in Starbound I find myself yearning to create a new permadeath character and explore the galaxy as I please, only to get bored going through the same starting phase long before that plan ever takes off. I really don't get why so many games that seem to actively encourage multiple playthroughs insist on frontloading a heap of unskippable tedium.

Gonna be honest, they took this game in a pretty awful direction. Felt like they sucked the fun right out of it.

Gotta agree. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Terraria. The progression was sorta off, there felt like there was a ton of stuff missing, building materials were damn near useless since your ship could house everything... I feel like every planet is the same old "Go down, wander the surface, go into caves, do the challenge thingies, then move to the next" with little variants and kinda dumb quests blocking your progression.

They say it's gonna release soon, but have they fixed the fucking GARBAGE frame rates? There's no way in hell a sprite based side scroller should ever hit 5 FPS at any point on a 760. No reason whatsoever

Have you tried running the game in administrator mode? I can't quite remember what I did to fix it, but I seem to recall the game running absolutely terribly until I applied some simply fix, and I think that was all it was.

Compared to Terraria, I just found the progression in StarBound waaaaaaay too slow. Mind you, haven't played the game in ages - but still.

Having to set up a tree-farm to fuel your coal-fired spaceship? Ya that makes total sense (No)

Or having a hand-phaser-multitool, yet a hand-made copper pickaxe will mine rock faster? Are you kidding me?


IMO the game's main issue is that its trying to be too many things: It wants guns as well as swords... but to balance things, they made the guns really weak. They wanted spaceships and awesome sci-fi stuff, but because of the terraria-roots then you also have to make dirt farms and beds made of straw. A style-confusion.

If it just embraced the sci-fi parts of it - went full "you have a nano-assembler, go nuts" and then let people mess around? Sure, why not.

but instead we get this strange mix that IMO just doesn't work

Tree farm? Coal powered space ship? I assume it's been a while since you played it, since I don't remember ever having to farm trees to run my ship on the more recent versions. I don't remember what you fuel it with initially, but you use actual fuel pretty much from the beginning.

Although, I will agree with you on the game's rather strange insistence on following the traditional crafting progression for these types of games, event though you have a space ship you can teleport to as long as you can see the sky. At least in Terraria the construction of buildings seem to serve some actual purpose, but in Starbound it just seem so pointless when you can simply use the ship, or just take over an existing structure.

 

[Dalisclock]

Compared to Terraria, I just found the progression in StarBound waaaaaaay too slow. Mind you, haven't played the game in ages - but still.

Having to set up a tree-farm to fuel your coal-fired spaceship? Ya that makes total sense (No)

Or having a hand-phaser-multitool, yet a hand-made copper pickaxe will mine rock faster? Are you kidding me?

It has been a while since you played. All ships use a single type of fuel that either needs to be purchased or found(airless moons are a goldmine for this).

As for the multi-tool, yeah, pickaxes are faster but the pickaxes break after you use them enough. And the multi-tool can be upgraded to mine faster.

 

[Grampy_bone]

What started out as a sandbox space adventure turned into a linear quest grind with scripted missions and level caps. The sandbox element was pushed into being a mere framework while content was turned into a repetitive gear treadmill. Terraria succeeded because all the activities and mechanics fed into each other organically. Build a bigger town to attract more useful shopkeepers while you explore the world and defeat more bosses. In Starbound the town is pre-built for you and all the shops are quest awards for doing scripted missions.

Sure you can upgrade your spaceship to pre-defined layouts and build towns and fill them with generic NPCs to do repetitive fetch quests, but why bother? None of that is part of the core gameplay loop of scripted missions and finding random loot. What a waste.

In order to fix Starbound you would have to do the following:

-Get rid of the starbase world and make all NPCs recruitable ship crew members instead.

-Get rid of scripted missions and make quest goals involve exploring new planets and random dungeons.

-Get rid of all hard quest-based limits on base building and gear upgrades. Allow players to advance as they explore naturally and find more resources while facing a naturally increasing difficulty curve.

Part of the problem is Early Access. Locking away progression until all these parts were in place would make the game near-unplayable for much of it's development. So they put it in early access and then added modular 'content' in the form of scripted missions instead of building out the existing framework into a cohesive whole.

Early Access is poison. It not only exploits consumers with inferior products, it taints the game and makes it something less than it could have been.

 

[Jburton9]

I am glad it is finally going to released status. I did the Kickstarter way back and it has gone through a lot of changes. It is kinda all over the place in design and not as smooth of a progression like Terraria but it does have its own charm in some ways.

If anything, I will be glad for release of Starbound, what a bumpy development ride it was heh.

 

[Gorrath]

I'm surprised so many people like or prefer Terraria's progression. Starbound's sucks, don't get me wrong, but I really don't like Terraria's either. I am glad Terraria has continued improving for a long time, adding new content and such, but I found it to get really repetitive too. Get (or even skip) tiers of armor/weapons and beat a boss, then get the next tier, rinse, repeat.

Starbound suffers from this too and I don't particularly like the quest system but I don't find it any more/less boring than mining for the next tier of metal to make a pick to mine for the next tier of metal to make a pick...

On the other hand Starbound (seemingly) has way more to find in terms of weapons (which are a mess, I admit) and things to build with. It does suffer from the "a thousand different worlds... that are all pretty much the same." but Terraria isn't any better for that and at least starbound has more to find in terms of dungeons, beasts, and things to decorate your home.

IN the end I'm not even sure the two games really do the same things well. If you want a fun platformer on a small-ish sandbox world, play Terraria. If you want a lot of room to stretch your legs and like to build and decorate, play Starbound.