In Design: Starbound

So, like the rest of the week days, Monday is now my day for writing something in particular - reviews of recently released games or games still in alpha/beta.

For this week, I'm going to review Starbound.

What's a Starbound?

For those of you who know what Terraria is, think of it as Terraria in space.

Well, technically it's Terraria on a bunch of different planets with some space inbetween, but it still has space and that's what counts.

For the rest of you... well... you should play Terraria.

As of the moment, now, think of Starbound like this - you're an exile from one of a handful of different races and have nothing but a spaceship and a little gear. No food. No fuel. You beam down to a planet and wander around gathering things so you can survive.

Eventually, you use a bunch of coal and power your ship to another planet so you can get more stuff. You craft armor. You find some weapons. You slay aliens. You have adventures.

It's also entirely in 2D - which is, in its own way, very nice - has a solid if currently somewhat unvaried soundtrack, and can be played with friends by setting up a server - a server hundreds of thousands of times easier to host than Terraria's servers ever were, for those of you who remember them...

What Makes It Good?

There are a couple of things that make Starbound a really good game.

First of all, it's big. Like, billions of planets big. To the point where you could never, ever visit all of them in any reasonable amount of time. You'd do better counting grains of sand then trying to run around every planet in Starbound.

Combat is actually really, really good. At least, in comparison to a lot of 2D games. You can dual wield. You can shoot stuff. You can kill things in some weird, unconventional ways, like dropping them into pools of acid or magma. You can even use a shield and do some cool block/riposte actions.

It's refreshing in a lot of ways.

You really do feel like you are just clinging to survival a lot of the time, which is important. This is a survival game. You should be trying to survive. You should be just barely finding enough food to eat, only barely finding enough coal to power your spaceship, and only barely killing those monsters in your bronze armor with your enormous battleaxe.

Really, the juxtaposition - at least early on - of spaceships and the necessity of running around clubbing things to death makes the game very enjoyable. Trust me. I am, after all, a sentient robot in medieval armor who pillages the galaxy in a coal-powered space castle. Why wouldn't you?

What's Not So Good?

And, of course, for everything that makes a game good, there are things that aren't so good...

Currently, there is not enough variety in the game. Differentiation between planets is often somewhat shallow, and the same sorts of monsters, dungeons, and other structures can be found on the majority of them. There are only a handful of different configurations for the dungeons and structures, too, so they get repetitive quite quickly.

This could be fixed with some outsourcing, support for a solid modding community, or just a ton of hard work. I'm expecting some of all three will occur a long time before the game gets out of beta.

It doesn't really take a whole lot of advantage of it being in space. You'd think it would, considering it's IN SPACE. There are no space stations, the only low-orbit things of interest are asteroids, and your ship is basically a mobile home serving no other purpose.

I'm sure a lot of that will get fixed up before beta ends, and I know they have a lot of plans for cool stuff in space. I just hope it all pans out.

My personal biggest problem with the game as of the moment is the issue with progression. It's stupidly difficult to progress past the first or second boss using certain styles of play. Once you get really ahead, coming back to an earlier planet to help a friend or search for materials is a lesson in killing everything in one shot and taking no damage.

Think your math class is boring (I don't!)? Well, it's nothing compared to being invincible and killing everything in one shot. It entirely removes the 'survival' aspect of the game in favor of the dull and simple leveling progression of JRPGs and the like.

What I'd like to see to fix this is a lot of stuff, but mostly more support for melee players and some semi-dynamic leveling. Not being able to advance without guns and ranged weapons (or cheesing, but no one wants to do that) just stinks, and coming back to earlier places only to find that there are no threats and nothing worth your time just ruins a lot of the fun of a game predicated on survival.

And, of course, for all that the game is lightweight, it has performance issues that stem more from a lack of optimization than anything else. You will get jerky frames and other things of that nature while you play.

I can't stress enough that this is just a natural, albeit naturally unpleasant, part of almost any game in beta. It's more important to get stuff out there than to optimize it to begin with, particularly when you don't know what all you're going to have to optimize yet.

Should You Get It?

If you like exploration and survival games, you will enjoy Starbound, even in its current beta state. For all that I might complain about it getting stale, I've played well over 40 hours. I can think of a lot of other games that have given me less entertainment and taken more of my money.

And, perhaps more importantly, buying in now will get you the rest of the game as it comes out. It's patching fast, which means new stuff is around all the time. Like grappling hooks.

Actually, that's a good enough reason right there. Get it. Because grappling hooks.

I'm done. Going to go grapple some things. Or hook some things? Points to whomever can give me the best verb form of grappling hook. As many as you want.

Go! Think! Grappling hooks!