★36
—— Starbound ——
Starbound recently came out of Early Access and I thought to myself, "I'll just play for a short while to see what it's like now"... Wrong! I ended up playing for hours. There's something I find very addictive and calming about games of this type. For those that don't know what Starbound is, it's an exploration based sandbox survival game, the most notable example being Terraria but this game is set in space. I got the game fairly soon after it was released, I can definitely say I was one of the people who bought into the hype but I don't feel misled or like I wasted my money even if the game was in Beta for a fairly long time.
This game was very slow to get going, I think I spent about 10 hours before I managed to get off the first planet. This was partly due to a failure in understanding what the quests were asking me to do, partly not understanding how to implement the actions required for the quests and partly because I was playing multi-player with someone who was far faster than I was at getting ore and chests.
Bosses are now in instances, originally they were done the same way as Terraria where you could build elaborate walkways and traps to beat them but now that is not possible as you cannot add or remove blocks in the instances and they are entirely reliant on your skill playing, ability to solve boss-style puzzles and how quickly you can use bandages (as they have no cooldown). I also think the bosses in Terraria are far more interesting, challenging and fun, even getting the parts to summon bosses in Terraria is. Starbound you either scan a bunch of objects then get a quest for the boss or you're just straight up handed a quest for them, once you have the relevant quest all you have to do is talk to your computer in your ship and you're ready to go.
One of the first things I noticed once I finally got my ship working and ready to travel the stars was the "bookmarks" option. I can't remember if this was implemented in the beta but it's a wonderful for keeping track of planets you favour. The ships themselves can be upgraded with enough time money and resources, it goes from a cramped and cosy cabin to something spacious, far more than the average person will probably actually need.
There is a great deal of variety amongst the planets, forests, sahara, waterworlds, frozen and molten and more. Many of these settlements among them as well as other types of buildings and areas of interest. I soon found however I didn't really need to do much exploration beyond the surface. The ores required for upgrading gear were often found in the chests and containers of those settlements, and plenty of it to go around. Underground it was very easy to lose your gear if you die and far easier to die, so why would I bother leaving the surface when I can just loop a planet then move onto the next one to get what i needed to progress.
Once you've progressed far enough with the quests and you've found a planet you're rather fond of you can choose to build a colony. Colonies function very similar to housing in Terraria, build a room, place a light, place a colony deed bought from a frog in the hub, optionally add some custom furniture and you're good to go. Furniture you place can spawn specific types of colonists. Colonies are great ways to earn "pixels", the currency used in Starbound, every now and then your colonist will give you a "gift" which seems more like rent, most commonly it's pixels but sometimes other objects too. After a while your colonists will hand out quests too and occasionally they will request to join your ships crew which comes with even more benefits. Add a teleport to the settlement and you don't even need to move your ship to the planet it's located to collect the paychecks.
Some other features include bug hunting, fossil collecting, figurine collecting, pokémon creature taming, reading, more collecting and of course interior decorating.
Starbound is a pretty good game, I'm not 100% done with playing the game but there are some downright crazy achievements I just cannot be bothered to attempt. For endgame I recommend the website Starbound Map to locate unique and interesting planets and if anyone is interested I made a short gameplay video showing an abandoned Hylotl house I converted to make a colony and some quests.
—— MacGuffin ——
This game seems inspired by The Stanley Parable, it's essentially a walking simulator, with an interactable environment, minor puzzles and a narrator. Although there are similarities in style it does have its own unique flair and to my knowledge it doesn't have multiple endings. You are a talented theif who gets a mysterious call from a man called Richard. He sends you to a nuclear power plant to retrieve an item known as the "MacGuffin". The game takes you on a humorous, bizarre and unexpected journey as learn who Richard really is and why the MacGuffin is so important and although it's mostly linear there are parts of the game which are easy to miss. The jokes can mostly be described as "random", so if that isn't your thing you won't enjoy this game. The game takes approximately 30mins to complete if you don't rush.
I don't know if anyone cares but I actually made a video of my second playthrough, it can be found here, fair warning though, there's flashing lights and screen shaking on a few occasions.
—— Stranded in Time ——
I feel like I've been tricked, I was promised time travel and this did not happen, at least not for me. This game is kind of lacking, a lot. The dialogue was cheesy and cringe-worthy, even the characters were face-palming it was so bad. There was a lot of travelling back and forth, especially in one section involving opening and closing doors which could have been settled by having all the doors permanently opened after solving a puzzle. The ending was abrupt and absolutely rubbish.
Stranded In Time seems to refer to the alien you meet whilst trapped in a cave, when the story ends, he kidnaps your Uncle and leaves you behind you on Earth. I wanted to see the aliens planet. :(
—— The Secret Order 3: Ancient Times ——
Fairly standard Artifex Mundi HoG, beautiful scenery, interesting puzzles, passable story, not very innovative. In The Secret Order 3 you travel back in time to Victorian London and then to a mythical realm known as Aeronheart to prevent your father from being killed. The gryphon was adorable!
—— Mandagon ——
Short, easy to complete and with stunningly detailed scenery this game is absolutely beautiful. Gameplay is fairly simple, a platformer where you find objects then bring it to a location, once you have done this for all the objects a gate will unlock and you will reach your goal.
The story is not obvious but quite interesting and left to your own interpretation.
I’m in the same situation than you with Starbound more or less. I’ve been playing more than I planned (but I still love terraria better for multiple reasons). I haven’t decided which planet so start building my first colony on though, and I’m finding the inventory management extremely tedious and unpractical especially compared to where terraria is now with the auto chest transfer/sorting functions. Still it’s a lot of fun to have your spaceshit and go through the galaxy :)
I like Terraria more also.
I built my first colony on my “home planet”, I got some many pixels from that place I was able to stock up on anything I wanted really and the quest would always be to go to the same location so I put guards either side and they’d kill off any nasties for me. The second colony was a spur of the moment thing because I like the Hylotl House so much. Do you know what kind of planet you’re after?
I would love that auto chest thing, Starbound is chaotic with how much stuff you end up looting.
Ideally I was looking for an ocean planet with a big enough island to put a colony, or better one with some Hylotl ruins like the one you happened to find already lying around on the surface (I love that japanese style the most). I only happened to find some with both small islands and with ruins at the very bottom of the ocean.
I watched your video and it’s really a great planet you found there! Do you happen to have the coordinates?
Sure thing, provided I’ve read them right Icarus Rim III should be at: x -564316069 y 393730773
It also has prisms, some apex stuff and ruins however it’s mostly frozen and barren which may not be what you’re after landscape-wise.
Using Hylotl as a key word on Starbound Maps brings up this which claims to have a Hylotl castle in a forest environment.
Thanks for the coordinates and also for the map website, I didn’t know about it :)
No problem. I checked out the one in the forest, it’s really nice. Doesn’t have the bed room at the top but I’m sure if you prefer that one you’ll make it how you want it anyway. :)
Is the survival elements still removed from Starbound? Last time I played it they were just before removing starvation and thirst. I should start playing it again. I was hyped at the beginning, but they made a very slow progress. So I got distracted after several months.
Just a sidequestion: Any reason why the active tab is always the second? I sometimes forget to read the first one because I overlooked them.
There are survival elements. You can definitely die of starvation and there’s an annoying beeping sound that occurs just before that is about to happen, there’s no thirst requirement though. If I’m honest though, I feel like the food bar depletes a bit to fast for my tastes but it doesn’t deplete at all whilst you sleep.
Fairly early on there are planets with no atmosphere so you need apparatus to breathe and later on higher tier planets you can also freeze to death, die from radiation and overheat if you don’t have the right equipment. There is also death via drowning and suffocation. The equipment needed is fairly basic and all comes from upgrading the same item repeatedly as you go up the tiers so you end up with a super item that protects you from everything. I think it would be more interesting to have multiple items and to swap them around so you have to plan ahead for each planet.
Stylistic preference at this point, initially it was because someone didn’t realise they were tabs and I thought it might be easier for people to realise that’s what they are having the second one as the active tab.
I really enjoyed Starbound when I played the unstable version right before current release. My favourite part was probably running around looking for new instruments. Because the music files for the instruments are written in the .abc format, you can actually download your own songs, put them in the game, and you can even play them when playing multiplayer! I really liked running around playing with my friend, and we should play together sometime, too!
I haven’t tried adding .abc files but I have a bunch of instruments scattered across various containers… :D
Definitely, just say if you’re going to play or something!