I've been, quite frankly, a bit obsessed with Starbound since it launched. I've been watching the progress for what seems like years now and was thrilled to see the beta launch.
For those who haven't kept up with the development, the beta cycle is going to be in three phases. We're currently very close to the beginning of the first phase. As you should expect, things are very incomplete, some stuff doesn't work, there are tons of bugs, and your character will get wiped a lot.
That said, Steam reports that I've spent 21 glorious hours playing this game, and I could just keep going. Even this early, there's a lot of fun to be had. There are literally millions of planets to explore. As I understand it, each planet will always be the same basic configuration in any game you play, but the ore deposits, chests, and random villages and dungeons you come across are randomly generated the first time you visit.
A lot of the game is like Terraria in many ways. You mine for things to create other things, and so on. But you can also find totally random weapons like in Diablo or Borderlands. There's tech that you can find and equip to give you stat boosts or let you walk around in a mech suit.
I wanted to see what the game could offer without playing so much of it I would burn out and not want to continue playing it. So, I cheated. I gave myself millions of pixels and every time I found a new ore, I maxed my stack so I could build the new tier of items. It seems like we're going to end up with way more armor tiers in this game, and some race specific armors that give different stats to tailor a kind of class based on your race.
There's still a long way to go, though. There's very little enemy variety in terms of their behavior, and even with millions of planets, it kinda starts seeming samey over time. It's obvious that we're still in early beta, but it's also obvious that I'm going to be obsessing over this game for quite some time once it's released.
For those who haven't kept up with the development, the beta cycle is going to be in three phases. We're currently very close to the beginning of the first phase. As you should expect, things are very incomplete, some stuff doesn't work, there are tons of bugs, and your character will get wiped a lot.
That said, Steam reports that I've spent 21 glorious hours playing this game, and I could just keep going. Even this early, there's a lot of fun to be had. There are literally millions of planets to explore. As I understand it, each planet will always be the same basic configuration in any game you play, but the ore deposits, chests, and random villages and dungeons you come across are randomly generated the first time you visit.
A lot of the game is like Terraria in many ways. You mine for things to create other things, and so on. But you can also find totally random weapons like in Diablo or Borderlands. There's tech that you can find and equip to give you stat boosts or let you walk around in a mech suit.
I wanted to see what the game could offer without playing so much of it I would burn out and not want to continue playing it. So, I cheated. I gave myself millions of pixels and every time I found a new ore, I maxed my stack so I could build the new tier of items. It seems like we're going to end up with way more armor tiers in this game, and some race specific armors that give different stats to tailor a kind of class based on your race.
There's still a long way to go, though. There's very little enemy variety in terms of their behavior, and even with millions of planets, it kinda starts seeming samey over time. It's obvious that we're still in early beta, but it's also obvious that I'm going to be obsessing over this game for quite some time once it's released.
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Sign Up / Log In
It's surprisingly good even at the early stage... Steam has me clocked in at 78 hours. I haven't bothered to cheat, but I have wiped worlds after updates which resets all the ore and chests. They recommend the wipes to get the new balance adjustments to the worlds. I haven't been wiping my character (other than the one forced wipe so far), but I'm not using any of the over-powered weapons that happened one update.
The balance is definitely changing a lot, you notice every update. Especially the bosses, pre-wipe the first boss took me a long time to take down (and after he could destroy blocks he wiped out a large section of the world), but later he was much easier, ditto with the second. I'm just collecting pixels to trigger the 3rd boss (I have all the materials needed) so I'll get to see it for the first time, and I think the 4th boss is either in or going to be soon.
I really like just exploring and digging, then hopping to another planet. The universe is HUGE.
also, I really like those storage lockers also... I have a bunch in my ship :)