Starbound

Lore & Background

Starbound begins with the player inside a spacecraft after the destruction of Earth, home of the Terrene Protectorate, an intergalactic peacekeeping organization from which the player has just graduated. The shuttle shoots into space without direction, orbiting a habitable planet where an adventure begins. The game contains both quests and story-driven missions buried inside its vast sandbox universe. The space shuttle acts as the player's vehicle, featuring a teleport pad, ship locker, fuel panel, and cockpit, with a fully customizable interior.

Gameplay elements such as items, enemies, and planets use procedural generation. Player class is defined by items worn. Players can farm, sell crops, build buildings, and charge rent to tenant NPCs. Update 1.0 added a story involving sandbox exploration to scan items and story dungeons to fight bosses. Update 1.3 [UNSTABLE] added modular mechs with weapons, tools, and bodies that set energy and health, used for exploring outer space areas like asteroid fields and spaceships. Update 1.4, the final content update as of 2019, added a bounty hunter questline providing closure to the story.

Development was announced by Chucklefish director Finn Brice in February 2012, with a tiered pre-order via the Humble Store on 13 April 2013. Within 24 hours, over 10,000 people backed the game, contributing over $230,000. By May 2013, pre-orders reached over $1,000,000. The game entered early access on Steam on 4 December 2013, receiving over $2,000,000 in pre-orders. It is written in C++ with a custom engine. The soundtrack was composed by Curtis Schweitzer. The Xbox version was announced in 2013 and officially launched on 24 October 2024, following an early playtest on the Xbox Insider App from August 28 to September 4, 2024.

Reader's Guide

Starbound received favorable reviews upon release, according to Metacritic. IGN praised its crafting, exploration, and combat mechanics, comparing it to Terraria. PC Gamer's Christopher Livingston called it a charming space sandbox that would keep players entertained for hours. Kotaku's Nathan Grayson praised its exploration, calling the universe 'strange and unpredictable' enough that players would never quite grow tired of it. By December 2016, the game had sold over 2.5 million copies. It was named Indie Game Magazine's most anticipated game of 2013. The game's significance lies in its procedural generation across a vast universe, combining sandbox exploration with story missions, and its long development cycle from early access to final content updates. The 2019 volunteer exploitation controversy, in which Chucklefish was accused of exploiting around a dozen voluntary contributors—some teenagers—who logged hundreds of hours without compensation, with allegations supported by former team members including Toby Fox, remains a notable part of its legacy. Chucklefish responded that contributors were under no obligation to create content or work to deadlines, and that everyone was credited or remunerated as per their agreement; contributors partially refuted this, citing deadlines and ethical concerns.

Did You Know?

• Within 24 hours of its pre-order opening in April 2013, over 10,000 people backed the game, contributing over $230,000.
• The game's soundtrack was composed by American composer Curtis Schweitzer.