At their most intense, these sessions make Starbound like a quasi-bullet hell shooter, both more manic and more predictable than its standard ground-based combat. Players can choose to investigate anomalies while flitting through solar systems, dumping their customisable mech out into zero-gravity and dodging Space Invader-y aliens and swarms of living rock blobs. Space combat, introduced as part of the 1.3 update, is generally more enjoyable.
I defaulted to using a legendary poison bow for much of my time in its pixellated galaxy, both for the fun in judging the arrow’s arc, and for the fact I could fire and forget, letting the green goop whittle down enemy health bars. I had more luck with ranged weapons: Starbound’s pistols, rifles, and bows. There’s a wide range of close-range weapons - from daggers, to broadswords, to two-handed hammers - but I found them all a bit finickity to use, especially when a lot of enemies close the distance between you with frightening speed. On desert worlds, I'd end up leading a trail of ornery wildlife, while on ocean worlds, I started swimming under islands just to avoid the menagerie of creatures that waited above, even though the slow pace of underwater made my journey twice as long as it should’ve been. Their erratic combat patterns can make exploration frustrating: combing a new world, it’s never quite clear whether that blue bird dog thing or that ball of flying fluff is going to object to your presence, and if so, how much of your health bar they’re going to chunk off with one attack.īeing forced to act as intergalactic game warden was by far my least favourite part of Starbound, and I kept finding ways to avoid combat. Some of these will wander, flap, or burble by without incident, but the majority of these critters will go straight for the player, their fangs, claws, or tentacles bared. This space ghost is a unique opponent, but most of Starbound’s worlds are infested with monsters. I didn’t even have the fuel I needed to get myself out of the star system and into one with a wider array of metals for the taking, forcing me to hop around on airless moons, picking up gooey FTL fuel while being chased by a beak-mouthed space ghost. I didn’t have the ore I’d need for parts, either, so I’d have to go spelunking to dig out copper, iron, tungsten, and the rest. I didn’t have the money I’d need to buy the requisite deeds, so I needed to build up a basic farm to kickstart some cash flow. I tried that with Starbound, but my plans to overhaul my starter mech and launch my own space station (both features introduced in the most recent 1.3 update) felt impossibly far off. In other craft-heavy games, I tend to set a specific item as a target, and build toward it, saving cash and hoarding materials in order to get there. The sheer amount of stuff you can do is staggering.
In the two years since the 2D craft-’em-up’s official release - and a full five years after it first hit early access - developer Chucklefish has only added more, putting out three significant updates that have introduced beefy new features like the chance to terraform planets, to upgrade weapons, and - crucially - to go fishing. A wing that I’m planning to fill with chickens, of course.Īt launch, Starbound offered a huge web of possibilities, from humble farming to exploring the galaxy. They love electrical wool, too, but it’s the metal chicken that’s allowed me to give my bipedal mech a better drill arm, as well as giving me the funds to buy a few bars of tungsten and add another wing to my starship.
The penguins at the spaceport pay loads for batteries, you see. Every day I teleport down to my little farm, collect all the wheat and cotton and kiwi fruits that have grown overnight, and fill my pockets with double-As. Do you want to have a look? No, seriously, she’s next to the electrical sheep, and she’s a proper money maker. I’ve got a robot chicken in the shed that parps out batteries.
Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse.