Starbound is a game that you can lose yourself in for hours. Whether played alone or with friends, Chucklefish's excellent spacefaring sandbox spectacular is, quite frankly, an utter joy. Having received a massive update – Upbeat Giraffe – earlier this year, Starbound is playable at EGX Rezzed this week with plenty to show, and so we sat down with Chucklefish's Molly Caroll to find out what's in store.
For the folks out there yet to sample the delights of Starbound, can you give us a brief little overview of the game?
Starbound is an extraterrestrial sandbox adventure game! Play as one of seven races and embark on a quest to survive-- and eventually thrive-- in an infinite procedurally generated universe. Players can explore villages and dungeons both ancient and modern, or build their own! They can hunt down bosses to collect loot, take on quests from NPCs for money, pick up an instrument and start an awesome intergalactic band, and take on story missions to delve into some of the greater galactic mysteries.
It’s a game with a lot of creative scope and a lot of possibilities, and we hope it’s got something for everyone!
Starbound has been in early access beta since 2013. What sort of opportunities has this process afforded Chucklefish in terms of development?
The community feedback and the support has allowed us the freedom and the time to go back and fix things that don’t quite work, or that could be better. We’ve been able to move everyone into one office, as well, which has been amazing for us!
As game that's really grown and developed as its community has done the same, how have Chucklefish gone about responding to the feedback from early adopters and balancing out the design plans and vision of the team with requests from the community?
We monitor the community’s feedback and it’s always appreciated and taken into account, but at the end of the day we’ve always got to do what we feel best fits our vision for the game.
We're seeing more and more games that deliver an awesome toolset up to player and then sort of let them go off and create their own adventures, and Starbound certainly fits into that sort of mould. How do you strike that balance between giving players such vast options for customisation and replayability, yet still ensuring Starbound has its own identity and distinct character within the genre?
I think the universe we’ve created in Starbound is a really great foundation for players to expand upon! The uniqueness of the races, the lore surrounding them, and the hints toward the main story have all generated quite a few fans so I think Starbound certainly has its own identity where lore is concerned.
Players can choose to mod the game to the point where the lore we’ve created is no longer relevant, too. They can completely change everything about the game, if they want to. The number of cool things people have been able to create with our engine is actually ridiculous, and I think Starbound stands out there, too, in a different sort of way.
The latest build for Starbound - Upbeat Giraffe - launched earlier this year. Can you tell us a bit about what that brought to the game?
The Upbeat Giraffe update consisted of nearly a year’s worth of changes-- it was absolutely massive, and has made Starbound feel almost like an entirely new game.
We’ve added the Novakid race, upgradeable ships, a ship AI called S.A.I.L., new world types, a central quest hub called The Outpost, missions, new techs, armors, weapons, monsters, bosses, crafting and cooking recipes, performance enhancements, combat changes, new modding features, and a new difficulty option-- among many, many other things.
For a more comprehensive list of changes, here’s our changelog: http://playstarbound.com/hark-a-stable-update-v-upbeat-giraffe/
Tell us about the Novakids!
They’re a wild-west inspired race of gas-based organisms. Star people! They’re a rowdy and forgetful bunch, and don’t much care for keeping written accounts of their history. In that way, they’re a bit mysterious-- even to themselves!
What can Rezzed attendees expect from Starbound and Chucklefish at the show?
Attendees can play the latest build of Starbound, of course! We’ll also be dedicating some time to showing off some of the amazing games we’re partnered with. You can expect to see Wanderlust Adventures, Lenna’s Inception, Halfway, Risk of Rain, Treasure Adventure World and Interstellaria at our booth.
We’ll be selling shirts and posters, too, and doing a couple of giveaways each day!
What's next for Starbound?
To mention a few: player placeable teleporters, starter pets, more improvements to combat and the game’s economy, and server-side improvements!
What's your personal, absolute favourite thing about Starbound?
I really just love building houses. We’ve got loads of building materials and objects in-game, so there’s a staggering number of possibilities! I’m a big fan of decorating.
The music system may be a close second-- I can think of few things more charming than wandering around planets with a little guitar, playing some of my favorite songs. That’s something I’ve absolutely always wanted to be able to do in games, so it’s very satisfying to have that feature in our own game.
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Huge thanks to Molly for taking the time to answer our questions! Starbound is playable at the Indie Room on the show floor at EGX Rezzed, and you can click here to check out some more of our EGX Rezzed spotlight interviews. Remember, our Starbound competition is still ongoing (more details on that here), and every EGX Rezzed ticket bought is eligible for free games and awesomeness from Size Five Games.
Hopefully see you there!
Fuzzy_Pixels