Starbound

[Iamgoofball]

This just came out on steam early access for 15 bucks.

Anyone else playing this awesome game?

[DorostheConqueror]

It's OK. I wouldn't recommend spending any money on a pre-order, though; skip the beta and wait for the official release.

The game is very much like Terraria; in fact, for the first couple hours, it's practically indistinguishable! This isn't necessarily a bad thing; if you're into Terraria, you'll dig Starbound right away. It's got more going on than Terraria, though, and once you get past the first boss it starts to feel less like a Terraria clone and more like a Terraria sequel. The framerate gets pretty wonky at times, the plot stinks, and there aren't enough biomes to make the galactic exploration component really pay off, but hopefully all that will be fixed by the full release, and current issues aside, there's still enough to do on each planet that the average Terraria fan should stay occupied.

The deal breaker here is a seriously bogus save compatibility issue. Starbound is a grand sandbox game, and as such players will want to be spending lots of time exploring, crafting, and building. But right now, each new game update renders all of your previous saves useless! The designers seem to be in no hurry to introduce any sort of cross-version save support; the very first save wipe occurred mere hours after the game's release, and it looks like this policy will continue for the duration of the beta period, and possibly beyond. So, unless you're looking for a low-commitment side-scrolling action game that'll let you kill a couple afternoons grinding through some crappy boss monsters before starting all over again, save your cash and wait for the full release.

[Abel]

Great game. I already have spent about 23 hours in it and I just can't get enough. I have always loved Terraria but I like Starbound even more. It's much more focused on exploration than Terraria, which also sets it apart from that particular game. In my experience, you spent most of the time in Terraria underground, whereas the coolest stuff in Starbound can be found on the surface of planets (NPCs, villages, dungeons, science labs, ...).

As Doros said, the game is still in beta and crashes and wipes are quite frequent. However, rumour has it the next update will be the final wipe (and this update should hit rather soon). I'm pretty sure there will still be unforseen wipes though, with a game that's still in full development. But even with the wipes I think you can have a lot of fun with the game, and it's only 15 bucks.

Oh yeah, if you have some friends that own Starbound, start a server. The game is so much more fun multiplayer.