So, pre-orders for Starbound went up recently, with a beta most likely coming in a month or two. Who else is planning on getting this? A good friend of mine got me a pre-order for it as an early birthday present (The 19th of April being my birthday) which came with the game OST as well, which is neat.
First, here's the official website: http://playstarbound.com/ Copy + Pasted from the About page (Warning, wall of text incoming): "Starbound is a brand new game undergoing active development by Chucklefish, an indie game company made up of a lovely group of dudes and dudettes. If you like what you see, please feel free to leave a comment or tell your friends. We hope this blog can be an insight into the trials and tribulations of the development process, the people behind the game, and what we hope to achieve. A story within a sandbox Starbound begins with you fleeing your homeworld in a space shuttle, just as it’s destroyed by an unknown enemy. With nothing to guide it, the escape pod shoots into space without direction, becoming hopelessly lost in a sea of stars. As luck would have it, the space shuttle makes contact with an abandoned space station and an adventure begins that will take you hurtling across the universe. Starbound contains both quests and story driven missions, buried inside its vast sandbox universe. Endless Planets to visit Planets in Starbound are entirely procedurally generated and filled to the brim with unique content. We went into the planet generation with one simple goal: no two planets should be the same. By procedurally generating even the smallest details, we’re doing just that. Not only is the terrain of the planet procedurally generated, but the weather, the gravity, the difficulty level, the plant life, the behaviour and appearance of alien creatures, and much more all contain random or procedurally generated elements. We want you to feel like an explorer! Because we’re working so hard to make each planet unique, we want to give you the tools to catalogue the things you find and make sure absolutely everything you find has depth in the world. Much like old school point and click adventures, absolutely every object in the world, right down to the trees and flowers, can be examined for a description. See a weird alien tree? Examine it! Maybe you’ll discover something about its use! For any explorer, sharing discoveries is important. So whilst the game is fully coop (Bring your friends along! Form an expedition!) you can also record your findings in an electronic logbook. Not only that, but each and every planet has unique coordinates in the Universe that you can share online, so other players can check out exactly what you found! Finding a new home Exploring is wonderful, but everyone needs a place to call their own. That’s why we’re letting you claim an entire planet! When you claim a planet as your new homeworld, a whole new aspect of gameplay opens up. Everything that makes a planet unique is at your command. Feel like changing the weather? Build a weather centre! Don’t like the terrain? Terraform it! Every aspect of the planet is under your control. Once you’re happy with it, start populating it with characters you’ve met in your travels and take care of them! They’ll have needs and desires and won’t hesitate to ask for your help if they require assistance. This is only just scratching the surface of what we have in store for you in Starbound. Make sure to visit often for news updates, reveals of new features, and other goodies." TL;DR Starbound is basically a massive, much more complex game in the style of Terraria, taking place in space. You have the ability to travel to other planets (all of which are randomly generated) in your customizable spacecraft thing. They are planning Faster Than Light-like battles with the ships. The weapons in the game are also completely randomly generated as well, as with most thing in the game. The soundtrack is pretty kickass too. It's pretty cheap now, so if anyone wants to check it out now would be the time to do so. Even after its release it will be procedurally updated, much like Minecraft and how Terraria was.
Anyone else reminded of Spore just a little bit? Seems cool though. Scratch that, after looking at gameplay footage, it's definitely more of a Terraria. I think it would have been a lot cooler in 3D....