Stellar adventures
Sometimes, a single planet isn’t enough to sate your wanderlust; you need a game that takes you across multiple solar systems on galaxy- spanning space adventures.
AS I sit here in the captain’s chair of the Starship Shaunterprise, fresh from a daring expedition to a mutated jungle planet where I barely escaped from cannibalistic tribal plant- people during a search for a galaxy- saving artefact, I realised: I really should take a break from my epic space adventures to write about Starbound.
During the weeks I’ve spent in this 2D sandbox adventure/ exploration/ crafting game, I’ve managed to discover alien- Japanese cities hidden beneath the frozen seas of an ice planet; recover lost technologies from an abandoned mad science lab on a solar- scorched post- apocalyptic planet; and build my own thriving pioneer colony on a lush garden planet. All in this one gorgeous- looking PC/ Mac/ Linux game!
If exploring strange new worlds and going where no one has gone before sounds like your kind of thing, then put on your space suit my friend, because we’re Starbound.
Starbound was officially launched late last month on Steam, but I originally reviewed this game waaay back in 2014 during its Early Access stages. Back then, the game’s crafting plus exploration elements in a side- viewing 2D environment made me think of it as Terraria in space! ( If you’re not familiar with Terraria, then think of it as 2D Minecraft in space!)
Two years on, and a whole lot has changed. Oh, Starbound is still Terraria in space in a way, but there’s a whole lot more added to the experience now. For starters, there’s actually a story to give your sandbox adventure some context!
You play as a new member of the Terrene Protectorate, the proud guardians of the universe. Unfortunately, five seconds into your graduation ceremony, an unnamed space beast smashes into Earth and gets its world- destroying and naughty tentacles all over the place, forcing you to flee into the depths of space.
This is where your adventure begins, on a broken starship lost out there among the stars, in a universe that’s both ripe for exploration and in dire need of saving. It’s up to you to prevent other planets from suffering Earth’s fate, by finding a way to stop the space beast once you’re satisfied exploring an infinite number of planets with different ecosystems and civilisations, of course.
Starbound can be divided into two parallel yet complementary parts – the Story and the Sandbox.
The basics of the Sandbox should be familiar to anybody who’s played Terraria or Minecraft: you mine minerals and kill monsters to gather resources to build better equipment, which will then let you mine shinier metals and kill bigger monsters, etc. If you’re smart, you might even build a shelter to take a break from getting mauled by nighttime predators.
However, the ability to travel between star systems in Starbound takes this resource- crafting- exploration cycle to a whole new level.
You’ll start by exploring a peaceful garden planet ( because a volcano planet as a starting level would’ve been too hardcore for even Captain Kirk) but soon after your first upgrades, you’ll be beaming down to haunted moons to mine Erchius fuel; digging through desert planets to uncover oil; and traipsing through mutated planets orbiting radioactive stars to gather Durasteel ore ( and maybe pick up a few superpowers).
It’s hard to overstate how exciting it is to trek across a near infinite number of worlds – each planet I visit boasts its own distinct ecosystem with unique lifeforms, resources and surprises. Exploration is at the heart of Starbound, and it’s absolutely thrilling to stumble across unexpected wonders like airships full of bird people selling new crops for me to plant, or medieval castles populated by a feudal robot society with quests for me to undertake.
At this point, I really should pay compliments to Starbound’s artwork – the game uses 2D sprites that are so well animated and illustrated that they make the worlds you explore feel rich and alive, instead of just the randomly generated arrays of tile and item data that they are.
Here’s one thing that impressed me: the game has nearly 80 different designs for beds, and that’s only one type of functional furniture you can scan, build or collect. It shows the amount of work developers Chucklefish put into ensuring there’s an extremely varied visual palette for you to discover in your travels, whether it’s the bone- themed furnishings of a tribal village or the shiny decor of a futuristic research lab.
That said, as with most games that rely on randomly generated content, Starbound does have a limit to how varied and different it can make certain things. Specifically, I’m saying that the weapons and monsters you encounter in this game are pretty uninteresting because, paradoxically, there’s a near infinite combination of them.
If you’ve played any game with randomised loot, like Diablo or Borderlands, you’ll know what I mean. Randomly generated weapons should, in theory, be exciting and possibly hilarious if you get an unlikely combination like a machine gun that shoots flaming chickens. In reality though, it just means everything follows a familiar sword or gun template, and you’ll dump a few dozen quirkily named weapons with pointless stats and only keep the one reliable gun with the highest damage.
Similarly with enemies, the variety of randomly generated monsters basically means most of these alien lifeforms can be generically grouped into either “melee baddies” or “flying baddies”.
Compare this to Terraria, where every weapon is carefully balanced against others in its tier, leading to interesting decisions when deciding your character loadout.
You could install mods or custom content to alleviate this problem – Starbound on Steam has really good mod support – but overall, it just means that the combat system is lacklustre, which is my one complaint about this otherwise great game.
Fortunately, I know of a perfect cure for whenever the act of shooting the 1000th Creature X with Weapon Y gets rather boring – Starbound’s story mode!
Starbound’s Story mode is one of the best things that distinguishes this game from its contemporaries like Terraria and Minecraft. Not only are your adventures and discoveries actually given context within a greater narrative, the story missions actually take you to hand- crafted dungeons full of puzzles, hidden treasures and unique boss fights!
There aren’t actually that many story dungeons to go through – perhaps half a dozen – but they each serve as a delightful change of pace from the endless exploration in Starbound. The Erchius Mining Facility mission, for example, changes the optimistic Star Trek- ish tone of the game into a more horror- filled, Alien feel, and that’s fantastic.
Each story dungeon has its own surprises, but no matter which mission you’re undertaking, I heartily recommend playing them with a friend. Starbound supports cooperative multiplayer, so it never hurts to bring an extra body... sorry, I meant buddy, to stand between you and a newly discovered alien species.
I’d like to give a special Terrene Protectorate salute to my Steam buddy Yithie, who always trusts me whenever I tell her, “No, you should have the honour of initiating first contact, they seem super friendly. But wear this red shirt first, OK?” I don’t know why she keeps trusting me.
If you’re still not convinced to take on the Story missions though, let me say this: progressing through the main questline of Starbound is required to unlock new features in the game, from the ability to recruit crew members, upgrade your ship, and scan/ record objects on your faux- tricorder.
Trust me, it’s worth it – after finishing only two missions, the Starship Shaunterprise now boasts a robot chief medical officer, gold- plated decor and a rec room replete with an indoor swimming pool. ( An outdoor swimming pool on a space ship would have been disastrous.) Now I get to explore the universe... in style!
Starbound expertly combines sandbox- style exploration/ crafting in infinitely- generated worlds with a rich story mode full of handcrafted missions. Plus, its 2D sprite art is nothing short of gorgeous and makes its crazy worlds feel so much more alive.
What more praise can I give this game? Starbound is just stellar, and now that I’ve finished this review, I can’t wait to get back into the captain’s chair and fly off to have more space adventures.
Now, if you’ll excuse me – the stars are calling.