Starbound Reviews

Full Review -- Curator Site

Video Review:

Terraria was a smash hit selling ten million units and still growing, and not only showing that Re-Logic was a force to be reckoned with but it also showed that Minecraft did not have to be the only building game. Rather than going for a straight clone of Minecraft, Terraria moved to a 2D adventure game, that had a wealth of combat, and bosses as well as a more meaningful progression than Minecraft. Overall, Terraria was an impressive game.

So when Tiy, the sprite artists, left Terraria and worked on a new game eventually called Starbound I took notice as did many others. But the focus of Starbound seemed to be developing more quests and story than Terraria ever had. In addition, Starbound was moved from a single planet to a sci-fi outer space adventure that allowed players to travel to different worlds. It definitely peaked my interest.

For the record, this is not my first time playing StarBound. I bought the game in July of 2017 and saw the game in late early access. Achievements had been added and I wanted to see the state of the game. However, the state was rough. I liked the look of the game, but the fact was much of the claimed major features for launch were still in the unstable branch that I wasn’t aware of, and with no guide or information, I refunded the game within a week to avoid losing the opportunity as I was unsure what was going on.

Time passed and I got Starbound in the Humble Care Package and here I am again to see how it’s grown. Currently, it’s in the 1.3 release which is their spacefaring release which focuses on giving the player more to do in space. So let’s begin.

From my opening, you might guess I’m a Terraria fan, and I am, I’ve put in over 50 hours into the game, and still enjoy it. With that said, it’s simple to say graphically Starbound has a lot in common with Terraria. That’s not surprising when you think about the fact that Tiy was a sprite artist and clearly brought that style with him to Starbound. In fact, I rather like the similar style because the style allows the developer to enhance the differences in the game a bit more. Starbound has 7 playable races, each with a different style and look. I personally played a Glitch which is their robot race and a Novakid which is supposed to be a gaseous character in some way.

The look of the characters are different and there are lots of customizations in the game for you to play with. Even the clothes the character wears can be changed, as well as having “racial armor” that only one race can build. In fact, the racial armor is a bit interesting. Whereas Glitches are Robots, their armor is based on Medieval Knights, and their architecture is as well. Novakid might be Gasbags on some level, but their society is based on the Wild West. It’s an odd twist and while I don’t know exactly why the strange racial armor looks the way it does, I do have to admit it is interesting to see the outfits and costumes. It is also interesting to see the level designs when you find an outpost of a specific race. There’s also a special racial pet that stays on your ship. The Glitches own a piggy, and it’s easily my favorite special pet.

So with all of that out of the way, let’s look at the story. The story begins rather suddenly. You’re joining The Protectorate and are about to earn the matter manipulator. Honestly, I feel like the story misses an important step here, and doesn’t give the player a chance to earn the matter manipulator, or does something like Fallout where you go through minor tasks as part of a tutorial. Instead, the game immediately jumps to graduation day. As it’s a graduation day in a game, you might be able to guess it goes poorly. It does. Everyone dies, and you get your matter manipulator and have to flee the planet.

From there you are rescued by an AI called “S.A.I.L.” which stands for Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice, Basically, it’s your AI buddy that will tell you what to do when no one else is available in the game. I like the idea of S.A.I.L but in practice, he seems remarkably unhelpful. There’s a point where it tells you that you are getting RADs from somewhere and as you get closer to the boss of the area, it screams out something like “you’re 98x the level of RAD.” Is that supposed to be a joke? Because it’s not well set up and not very funny.

The fact is SAIL could just say “You’re almost there, getting closer” and been more helpful. Ultimately SAIL is supposed to drive some dialogue for the story but personally, I couldn’t stand the AI because it intentionally seems to be useless. I guess you could go with it trying to be humorous, but it’s just an annoying character, and maybe I’ve just had enough of these useless AIs. SAIL isn’t malicious like Glados but he just isn’t useful.

So with the AI itself out of the way we continue the story, SAIL help you steal a ship during that first level of graduation day. Throughout this level, you’ll have a very limited tutorial that shows you how to attack and how to dig with the matter manipulator. Everything else is not mentioned, and it’s a flaw of the game.

I knew how to craft in the game due to playing Terraria which is a similar game, but ultimately there’s an awkwardness to how the system works here. However, once you understand that you are supposed to use the crafting station, the crafting works. But the downside is so much of this is done through trial and error.

The game doesn’t even attempt to really teach it’s complex systems such as upgradable crafting stations and the different stations because the game is about exploration, but again, if the opening was longer and showed a bit more, we might be able to understand the rules of the game.

Still, once you’ve escaped on the ship, the game starts, and it’s a slow burn. You land on a planet and are told to investigate the surface. Now I have to give Chucklefish credit here. Starbound is fully randomized. You get a random space in the galaxy, a random planet (though always a low danger world, and usually a forest place) and the same goal to reach, but the planet is different.


I went through the opening three times, and each time I landed on a different world, in name, design, and place. The worlds are always a lush forest world, but there’s a lot of variety. The first world I was on in the First Look required a long distance to find the energy source that SAIL eventually detects, the second attempt had a similar length but different land, I even found a random mining outpost. Then I started the Novakid version and landed almost next to the energy source the game wanted me to investigate. The fact is the game really does have true randomness in it, and I have to applaud that because it’s what makes the game interesting to play two, three, or even seven times.

However, when you reach your energy source you quickly are told you have to go to the core of the world to get energy crystals called core fragments. This requires a deep dive down to the core of the planet.

If you want to read more, you can see the full review with pictures and video at https://kinglink-reviews.com/2018/07/01/starbound-review/. You can also check out my Curator page at If you want to hear more from me, you can show me that by following my curator at http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31803828-Kinglink-Revi...