Once Terraria was on the tip of everyone's tongue and then one day it all ended, no more updates, no more news, no more Terraria. If you do not know the wonderful open world side scrolling Terraria then I refer you to my review from May of last year.  Starbound is often said to be the successor to Terraria, which isn't correct at all. The team at Starbound, Chucklefish, is rather large and only one of the developers is from Terraria, furthermore the gameplay and design of Starbound is immensely different. If you are looking for another game like Terraria you may find Starbound to fill that void, but expect something more akin to a grand space adventure than a tromp through dungeons, caves, jungles and hell. Before I go into the nitty gritty details of what Starbound is let me just say that is a new game and it is set for a Summer 2012 release, but they may push it back a bit if they want more time to smooth out the game.



Read on for a look at some gameplay and a great deal of info.
Starbound is truly a game about space. It is about a crew escaping from an unknown threat in a space shuttle, luckily that crew makes contact with an abandoned space station and makes that their base of operations. There will be randomly generated content, but there will also be story driven quests.You will manage it all from the space station. A space station that will start in disrepair and can be repaired throughout your travels. You will also find new crew, be able to conduct research, catch rare creatures (which they describe as being similar to  capturing Pokmeon) and return the space station to its former magnificent state. From the space station you will be able to explore an endless sea of planets, every planet will be randomly generated and is made to feel unique. They tried to do that by really upping the ante on what is randomly generated, things like difficulty, gravity, weather, plant life, animals and more.



Every planet you visit will have plenty to discover. They made tools to catalogue everything you find and they wanted to make it so every single thing on a planet can be examined. You can do this all by yourself or cooperatively with friends, but no matter what you will be able to store everything you find inside your logbook. You will also be able to go online and tell others coordinates for a planet you just visited, so if you find somewhere truly fantastic you can let others experience the same planet. One thing to note about each planet is that each planet will loop around, meaning that if you keep walking to the east you will eventually come back around to where you once stood before. Each planet will also not necessarily have only hostile NPC's, there are friendly races or animals in the game that you may bump into.



On top of being able to explore an endless amount of planets you will also be able to claim a planet for your own. There isn't a great amount of detail on this, but you will be able to change every aspect of a planet, whether that's terrain or weather and once your done messing with the planet you can populate it with the characters you've found in your space adventures. The characters will ask you to do things and provide some more tasks if you wish to do so. This feature, on top of everything else, sounds absolutely fantastic to me. Not only does Starbound make you an explorer, but it also gives you the means to make an impact and create your own unique world among the stars on top of restoring your own star base.



Combat in Spacebound is not going to be strictly futuristic laser rifles, there will be a wide variety of melee weaponry and plenty of equally balanced ranged weaponry. Each type of combat will have it's own strengths and weakness, as one would expect, but they are meant to both be very useful in their owns. There isn't going to be any space combat, as in ship to ship combat or anything like that, but it is something Chucklefish will consider as a possible post-release feature. Now for the one video of Starbound in action. Unfortunately it is only a lighting demo, but at least you can get a very small idea of how it will look in motion.

Main Website: http://playstarbound.com/
Indiegamemag.com Starbound Interview

-Written by Sean Cargle