Terrific sci-fi romp through the unusual & absurd
STARBOUND is a terrific sci-fi 2D romp through the unusual and absurd. You will travel through the galaxy with a troupe consisting of a pig, a couple of aliens and two heavily armed penguins. What begins as a quest to save the universe from an ancient evil quickly devolves into a fun and charming rabbit hole of tasks and to-do lists. Yes, you will upgrade yourself in various ways, but if you tire of digging for the for elusive titanium ore you can instead spend hours meticulously decorating your starship with assorted furniture and sundries.
Starbound begins with choosing a race, with options ranging from hyper-intelligent apes to self-aware robots. Whichever race you choose, the game begins with your character alone on a spaceship, stranded with minimal tools and floating above an unexplored planet.
Once you warp to the planet’s surface, Starbound’s immediate structure will look familiar to anyone who’s played a crafting-based sandbox game in the last five years. Cut down wood, mine ore, build tools to help you cut down wood and mine ore faster, repeat. You’ll also need to run from or fight local wildlife, find food and build a shelter to keep yourself safe and warm during cold nights. While it is very reminiscent of the brilliant Terrarium, you can always escape the treacherous night times by warping back to your spaceship.
The story itself isn’t the most complex or mind-blowing, but the universe that developer Chucklefish built to tell it in is over- flowing with character and detail. Each of the six sentient races has a unique culture, architectural style, and ongoing conflict that must be resolved in order to save the galaxy. From ferocious plant people struggling with a subculture of cannibalism to self-aware robots stuck in a humorously medieval mindset due to a glitch in their programming, there’s plenty of it.
If building is more your thing, there are hundreds of structural and decorative blocks that can be collected and crafted to create exactly the look you’re going for. From the various alien styles you can deconstruct and rebuild to craftable statuary and scores of available materials available across countless planets, I’ve never felt quite so much stylistic freedom in a 2D crafting game before.
Starbound excels primarily as a crafting and exploration game, although there is enough packed in to this masterpiece to satiate the desires of the most critical gamers. This is not a game you want to miss.