The First 15

I found the character creator to be simple and yet fun. There wasn’t much, but it got the job done and made me feel like the character was one I chose.

The available difficulties are Casual, Survivor, and Hardcore. I chose the Survivor difficulty.

I like how in the story you are already late right from the start. It reminds me of The Journeyman Project (ten points if you’ve even heard of that game).  It probably isn’t intentional, but it was a nice nostalgia trip for me.

You get the Matter Converter right away and start using it immediately. Even this early I can tell that most of the game will revolve around the Matter Converter.

Strangely enough, I just got this super advanced piece of technology (the Matter Converter) and the next thing I get is a…sword. Not a beam weapon, not a phase pistol, not even a normal gun, a sword. And, the sword I get isn’t some futuristic weapon. It’s a metal sword. And somehow, it’s the only weapon I find during my escape.  From a gameplay perspective it makes sense that you start with a melee weapon, but the sharp disconnect when it comes to the lore of the game makes this interaction feel forced. It might make more sense if I got a piece of metal I grabbed from the rubble to use as an improvised weapon, but instead someone from this super advanced society took the time to create a really crappy sword that I just happened to find. This could have been handled better.

I arrive on my spaceship and find there is a cat already aboard. It’s a small decision by the designers to include a silent companion, but it’s a nice touch and adds a bit more personality to the game. The other “character” is the computer AI who likes to make very sarcastic remarks. For instance, “There is a 32% chance this discovery is important and a 98% chance that you have nothing better to do than investigate.” So far, I like the cast of characters they’ve put together for me to “work” with.

The very first thing I did upon arriving at the planet was try digging a hole into the earth using the Matter Converter. I got a little ways down and found a cavern with some enemies who killed me in short order. Alright then.

And that seemed a fitting end to my first 15 minutes of playtime.

Story

The opening of the story certainly gave me a sense of having just barely managed to escape something horrendous. My problem with the story is that very quickly the game explains exactly what is happening and you get recruited to defeat the ‘great evil’. In a game that’s supposed to be all about exploration and experimentation it seems odd that they would simply hand you the whole story right from the start without any sort of effort. The story itself is intriguing, but I feel that it would be even better if players had to piece it together themselves by exploring the various planets.

Interface and Controls

One thing I found very strange is that, as far as I could find, there is no way to pause the game. Pressing ESC brings up the menu, but it doesn’t pause the game in the background even if I’m only playing single player. There are a million and one reasons players might need to get up from their computer, and not allowing them to pause the game seems like a poor decision. Especially given that on the hardest difficulty dying is permanent.

One big oversight with the game is that the game only saves when you quit. What this means is that if the game crashes (which I will mention never happened to me) or the power goes out (which did happen to me) then you lose all of your progress since the last time you started the game. Eventually I got into the habit of quitting to the main menu and then re-entering the game every hour or so just in case. The game loads very quickly, so this wasn’t a huge annoyance, but it still felt weird not to have some sort of auto-save feature.

You can’t skip cutscenes. I would think that by 2016 developers know better than to have 5+ minute cutscenes with no way to skip them, but it would seem not. This is even more odd given that you do have the option to skip the opening segment of the game.

Gameplay

Early on I found myself getting hurt a lot, which obviously was a problem. However, this became much less of a problem once I figured out how to craft health kits. It’s a smart idea on the part of the designers to give players early and easy access to basic health recovery. It incentivizes players to explore the crafting system without requiring it (since it is possible to get good enough you stop getting hurt). Players who tinker with crafting are ultimately rewarded with health packs for their efforts. This interaction is perfectly designed and represents how a game like this should unfurl.

The lack of an overview map is annoying and makes it difficult to navigate the planet at times, especially from inside the earth.

My biggest complaint with the game relates to exploration and how it interacts with the different difficulty options. Digging into the planet is a fun experience. You never know if you’re going to find a vein of rare minerals or maybe drop into a cavern filled with monsters and treasure. The problem comes when you’re done having fun and want to return to the surface. On Survivor difficulty you cannot return to your ship unless you are standing on the planet’s surface. Meaning that if you dig down into the planet, you then have to dig all the way back to the surface which takes ages compared to how quickly you can burrow down. Also, if you happen to die on Survivor difficulty you lose everything you’ve gathered. This penalty seems more than a little absurdly harsh. And on Hardcore mode when you die you stay dead. On the flip side there is Casual in which you lose nothing for dying and can warp back to the ship from anywhere, including inside the planet. I noticed that exploration became infinitely more enjoyable when I could explore somewhere for as long as I liked, and then warp back once I was done rather than having to slog my way back to the surface. And of course there’s the risk of dying when I dig up into a chamber and get crushed by an avalanche of bones (true story) at which point I lose everything I gathered if I’m playing on Survivor. My issue is that there exists such a huge disparity between Casual and the other two difficulties. You have to chose between exploration being almost too easy, or it being a massive pain. There should be a middle difficulty between Casual and Survivor in which dying still carries a penalty, but doesn’t make you want to quit playing altogether. And as for exploring, there should be a system in place (and available the moment you set foot on your first planet) that allows you to quickly return to your ship in exchange for some amount of resources (such as Core Fragments which are found near the center of most planets). Given how much of the game is about the joy of exploring, they make it surprisingly difficult to actually enjoy exploration.

One of the big upsides to this game is that it supports modding. While I did not use any of the mods available I did take a look through what was available. Many of these mods add an absolutely staggering number of new items to the game while others subtly (or not so subtly) change the rules. There are mods that do things like add the hunger system to Casual difficulty or make it so you don’t lose items on Survivor difficulty when you die (though you still lose money). It is possible that there may be other mods that address other issues I have with this game. That said, this review is for the base version of the game as envisioned by the developers.

Conclusion

You will like this game if you enjoy getting sidetracked by exploring previously undiscovered areas and tinkering with a wide variety of craftable items. You can also build your own buildings and decorate/upgrade your spaceship.

You will not like this game if you want a high action game or one that guides from one action point to the next. While this game does have a core storyline it does a lot of meandering along the way. Much of this game is about finding your own fun.

Starbound is a solid foundation for a game. That said, there are a number of gameplay decisions that make things feel more frustrating than fun. Fortunately, with the assistance of some mods, many of those issues can be addressed rather easily.

Thank you for reading my review and I hope it provided you some real insight into Starbound. Please feel free to leave any remarks in the comments section below.