Starbound is a game slated to come out later this year (no specific date from what I’ve seen) and I am very excited to play it! In many ways it is similar to Terraria – it’s a 2D, sandbox game in which you craft and mine and build. However there are differences. And they do make quite the… difference? The first big difference is that while Terraria is recognizably fantasy-based, Starbound is more science fiction oriented, as you may guess from the name. You start on your ship and can travel to different planets, seeing new landscapes and coming across new monsters and resources. The other big difference is that there are actual quests. As the website says, “It’s a story inside a sandbox!”.

So far, this game meets all of my personal “things-that-I-love-to-see-in-a-game” bullet points: sandbox; pixely retro graphics (done well); nice electronic music; lots of character customization. That’s not to say of course that I wouldn’t play a game that doesn’t meet some or all of these points, but these are just some of my favorite things. And Starbound meets these points and is probably why I am drawn to it.

Starbound is being developed and produced by Chucklefish, the same company that is producing another game I am looking forward to: Stardew Valley which I wrote about here.

Another really nice thing about Starbound is that the developers post updates on their progress nearly every single day! They haven’t yet gotten to beta stage yet, but the level of communication with fans is great.

Anyway, below is a demo video of some players building a base. I love all the details you can put into it!