Starbound is a game that's been coming for a long time, so when it finally became available in Beta form last Wednesday loads of people (who had pre-ordered) were immediately in-game testing and reporting back all the bugs of the early Beta. Although I'd only known about the game since August, when I saw it played at the Insomnia 49 event, I too was eagerly joining the crowds as we began out journey into this game...
First things first, Starbound has been called 'Terraria in space' and that's actually a pretty accurate description, as the mechanics of the game are similar and it is also a singleplayer/multiplayer game. The game sees your character, chosen from six different species and customised to your liking, having fled your homeworld and coming to a stop above a planet in your now fuelless spacecraft. You beam down and begin to mine for and craft resources to allow yourself to survive and eventually refuel your ship so you can go to other places in your solar system and eventually other systems and even galaxies. Each planet/moon's creatures are also customly generated with random body parts and colour palates and most will try to attack you. Fortunately among the items you are given for starting (stored in your ship's locker) you will get a sword of some kind so you can at least fight back. The other main item you get is a matter manipulator which can do pretty much all mining and tree chopping you need done, but at a much slower speed than if you were using a tool made for that purpose. Your character has a decently sized inventory and a hotbar with 10 slots plus a bonus two L and R slots in the middle for your most important and often-used tools, and survival depends on keeping a 'body temperature' bar and a hunger meter topped up to avoid death.
Having played Terraria many times before I must say that I find Starbound's crafting system somewhat easier, because if you know what you want to make you can search for the item and discover exactly what you need to build the item. This does however depend on if you're highlighting the relevant item to craft it, if it needs such an item (e.g. iron anvil, crafting table etc.). Interaction with most items and NPCs is done this way, highlighting the item or NPC in question and then using the E button to interact with it/them. Z will switch between whatever two items you have placed into the L and R (I'd recommend the matter manipulator and whatever weapon you prefer using) and X will switch from number inventory items to the LR slot items and back again quickly. Shift will also allow for more precise mining, switching from the 2x2/3x3 block your mining tool does by default to a single block wide each way.
Right now the game is, as mentioned at the beginning, in an early Beta to all pre-orderers. This means that developer Chucklefish are releasing new patches often and already there's been one 'wipe' update, the latest one: Annoyed Koala which has been called 'the first balance patch'. With this new patch a lot of bugs have already been fixed, including reprogrammed monster AI to make them 'smarter' and stop them getting stuck so often, a total overhaul of the levelling system, the beginnings of 'creature capture' (you have three pet slots on your character screen and these I look forward to filling one day), a new galaxy sector, added plenty of new items, among them a Grappling Hook (which makes me very happy as it was such a useful item in Terraria) and plenty more.
Starbound is available for PC, Mac and Linux and the full version of the game will be coming in 2014.
Starbound is available right now to buy as a pre-order from Chucklefish's site:
http://www.playstarboundgame.com
