My Experience with Starbound

[Amazing Kitsune]

So I got curious and bought this game off of Steam yesterday called Starbound, it's still in Beta but I think it offers a lot of potential. I thought I'd give you guys a little walkthrough of the opening minutes of the game.

It's a sandbox RPG, as best I can tell. You start off the game by picking from several different races and designing your character. There is a human race, an bird race, an ape race, an amphibian race, a plant race, and a robot race. You choose your race and then you can customize your character quite a bit.


As you can see, graphically it has a SNES vibe.






This is my character. She's an of the Amphibian race, the Hylotl. She's called The Doomed One simply because she will be wiped with the next patch of the game. That's an unfortunate downside of being a part of the whole paid beta thing, but it's understandable. I'm not certain if picking your race makes any real gameplay differences, but there are a lot of cosmetic differences.

They get their own ships, for example.




Not surprisingly, it's fish themed. Every race has a different ship to start off with and a different story reason for being alone exploring the universe. Your ship is out of fuel, so you need to get moving. You gain your first quest, aptly named "Fish out of Water"

It's simple. You walk over to the nearby container in your ship and get a Matter Manipulator, along with a weapon, a flashlight, some torches, and some seeds. These will all be useful later. Just pick the Matter Manipulator up and you get your first quest.



To be continued in a half an hour or so.

[Giul T.]

uh...Awesome?

[mcmahonfan85]

Dec 29, 2013 21:09:32 GMT -5 Giul T. said:

uh...Awesome?

Super awesome?

[dragonsteincole]

Benefit of the doubt, and assume you sneezed and clicked the wrong sub-forum to post in.

Game is cool tho'.

[Amazing Kitsune]

Curses!

[jagilki]

Is Starbound stealing DB's Heat?

[Amazing Kitsune]

Dec 29, 2013 21:32:41 GMT -5 jagilki said:

Is Starbound stealing DB's Heat?

Clearly.

[MrBRulzOK]

Dec 29, 2013 21:32:41 GMT -5 jagilki said:

Is Starbound stealing DB's Heat?

Those damn Apex!

[Kayfabe FAN don't want none]

[Deleted]

Will Starbound ruin Tensai's beard?

[Deleted]

How could you be so careless as to post this in the wrong forum?!

[Chip]

Dec 29, 2013 21:04:26 GMT -5 Amazing Kitsune said:

I'm not certain if picking your race makes any real gameplay differences, but there are a lot of cosmetic differences.

You start with a different ship, NPCs in the world react to you differently and you naturally know how to craft armour associated with your race. To craft other races armour you need to visit their homes on different planets and buy the blueprints from their merchants. Each race reacts differently and says different things when you inspect items in the world as well. That's pretty much it currently.

[Amazing Kitsune]

Dec 29, 2013 21:39:50 GMT -5 @hobojack said:

How could you be so careless as to post this in the wrong forum?!

I blame Daniel Bryan. If it wasn't for his B+ influence, I wouldn't be a B+ poster.

[Amazing Kitsune]

Your first quest proper is entitled "Shop Class"

Your goal is to build a crafting table so that you can begin, well, crafting things. To do this, you'll need to beam down to the surface of your first planet. This is completely random, but from a few initial tests, I know that odds are I'll land in a lush forest-ish place. I don't even need to check my computer to see what type of planet it is.





So I teleport down to the center of a Castle--right on top of some sort of robo-knight. I'm absolutely by this. I don't have my weapon equipped. In the ensuing battle, I get beat pretty good for a few seconds. I'm not good with the controls yet, but I am able to equip my two-handed sword and fight back. It's really an epic, unexpected turn of events.


After a quick fight, I defeat him and go looking for a tree. The castle is not very large, so I leave it from the other side and begin looking for a tree to cut down.




Thankfully, I find it quickly and begin cutting it down with my matter manipulator.

[Amazing Kitsune]

I cut the tree down and gather the wood, which I use to build a workbench.





I can use the workbench to craft any number of things--mostly house related stuff at the moment though, it seems. I also get my next quest, which is to find food. As the game goes on, you become hungry and need to eat in order to survive.




It begins to get dark, however, and my first instinct is to begin building shelter. Exposure to the cold and elements can also kill you. So I use my extra wood, crafting bench, and matter manipulator to begin building a primitive shelter. In the above picture, you can see the gauge measuring my body temperature at the bottom of the screen. It goes down the longer you're exposed to the cold. When it goes completely down, you begin to take damage.



Still a little unfamiliar with the game mechanics. I kind of panic and use my crafting menu to make a campfire right on top of my crafting bench. I could have sat it anywhere, but I freaked out. It works, though. I don't have to worry about the cold. You can also build more elaborate homes than this. I picked a poor spot, I think.

At least I don't have anything else to worry about...



Except the fact that The Doomed one is beginning to get a little hungry. In addition to making sure that your character stays warm, you also have to make sure that they stay fed. Failing to do so will result in death. So it's part Sandbox RPG, Part Survival Adventure. I guess I have to figure out how this whole hunting system works. Can't be any harder than posting on the FAN forums...

[Chip]

I've never encountered that type of structure before and I've seen a ton of stuff in my space travels. It looks Apex in design but has Glitch inside? Weird. Curious to see what you find in there.

[Amazing Kitsune]

Dec 30, 2013 6:51:12 GMT -5 Chip said:

I've never encountered that type of structure before and I've seen a ton of stuff in my space travels. It looks Apex in design but has Glitch inside? Weird. Curious to see what you find in there.

So a little later in the game I use my crafting skills to create a bow. Killing animals with a sword or standard weapon makes them typically drop something called pixels, which I'm sure is either money or a major crafting material. I haven't made it far enough to mess with that yet. If you kill them with a bow--and probably a few other hunting oriented weapons, they drop meat. The next morning in the game, I went hunting. Quickly, I found some sort of lizard looking thing.




One lizard looking thing attacked me. When I slew him, the rest of his brethren just off-screen ran to safety. They were trapped by the side of another building. I killed them and got their meat, which I will cook later. I was curious about the building, since it had a mysterious computer in it--alongside a treasure chest...and a giant poster of a Banana. Could this be proof of it being an Apex building?

If so, I'm a huge fan of the subtlety.

[Chip]

Dec 30, 2013 10:26:51 GMT -5 Amazing Kitsune said:

Could this be proof of it being an Apex building?

If so, I'm a huge fan of the subtlety.

Ha, yeah the Apex race are basically Planet of the Apes monkeys. They are the most technologically advanced race in the universe.

[Amazing Kitsune]

I went into the Apex building as seen at the bottom of my previous post. The treasure chest did not have too much in it besides a slightly better sword, which was good. I then decided to explore the original building I beamed down into. I used torches to light my way down, deeper into the dark abyss of the castle.



As I explore deeper, it gets kind of creepy. I wasn't expecting this vibe. One of the robo-knights (An example of the Glitch playable race, I believe) says something along the lines of "I'll drag you down here with me" in the middle of the darkness. I slay him pretty easily, but still, it was creepy. I have to light torches in some places to see. It seems easier to me than using my flash light.








And then I fight a whole hoard of his brothers. The castle is pretty heavily populated. I manage to get pretty good at killing them. I feel like a jerk when one yells, "You killed Seedwing!"

Am I becoming a Monster? This is a little troubling. I mean, they attacked ME! Then again, I guess I did just beam down from space and invade their home.... Hrm. Ambiguity.





But hey, I get loot. Including a nice Ocarina! I can play lots of songs on it. Totally worth destroying robot lives, I think. Look at those notes! The game is actually reminding me a lot of Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link, a lot. Actually has a pretty similar feel despite being totally different.

[Lazy peon]

I tried the game for a while, got tier 2. I haven't seen anything like the castle or that sci-fi building. I did find a mineshaft area, a few NPC filled towns, and a HUGE branching cave that seemed to go down forever, with many large drops, getting lots of ore and those pixel crate things. It went so far down I actually found lava. I had to save and quit so I'd be back at my ship cause climbing out would have been impossible, this was before I knew you could take dirt from your inventory to build up stuff.

I'm gonna stop playing and wait for the full release, or at least until they add quests. Having actual quests to do, including random quests from NPCs which I heard was planned, would make a huge difference to me.
I haven't run in to any bugs, but a lot of things still aren't explained well or at all, so hopefully that will be fixed by release too.