Recent reviews by Cicero

Man since I was able to play this game again, never have I gotten fustraighted with the toolbar/hotkeys interface and recieved the worse recon Chucklefish has pulled off I'll explain that later. For now here's a runthrough.

Starbound is a 2D Terraria-like game that takes place in outer space. Here you're able to choose any species in the game besides Humans. They are;

• Avian
  
• Hylotl
  
• Apex
  
• Floran
  
• Human
  
• Glitch
  
• Novakid

Each species "used" to have their seperate Stories. Your character starts off of what happened and their starship has been severely damaged to the point that it's it can longer ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ itself leaving them in orbit with the planet they start on.
The player is tasked to repair the ship to start exploring the galaxy for their own pleasure. Each species "used" to have a Codex function in which some explain the back story of their species giving depth to each species which (In my opinion) I like.

Controls are simple, AD keys to move Left and Right, S key to duck, and a mouse to move the cursor around. The player can build in two layers with the left Mouse button building in the same dimension as the player and in the background. Again, just like Terraria just with a sci-fi/space theme.

There are various builds that are randomly generated in the game such as villages, Cities, temples, and dungeons. You can find various books of a specific species depending what the build is. This adds more depth between the species of the game. There are also "Missions" in the game which can be accessed through you're ship's mission log. Needless to say, there are bosses in the game and some are challenging to say the least. Finally there is some sort of mainstory which is kinda weak but it would be more stronger if you played as the Humans.

Now remember that in the begining I mentioned that this game had the worse recon a indie studious can ever do. Yeah since the realease update all of the species besides humans no longer had the background and stories they originally had before release hence why you noticed the "Used" in run through, now the mainstory affects all species this is how it goes (Skip this part if don't want to the game's intro spoiled)

If you played as the humans you would know the backstory for them is that Earth was ripped apart by a large tenticle creature. The character states they barely escapped and their ship is in ruins. That's fine and all but now since the release update of the game; All species now start on earth and are apart of some huge organization that protects the universe or some ♥♥♥♥, however during a graduaton meeting they're attacked by the tenticle monster and your characters makes a mad dash to a ship which by the way was already damaged! So now they're stranded and the AI of the ship once repaired tells the character that Earth is destroyed and have to survive on their own now.

I read that somewhere that Chucklefish said that all of the other species besides humans that their stories/background were just place holders and if that were the case then that's just throwing out everything I actually ENJOYED. I like the backstories to each species, it had actual DEPTH in the game. But now they pretty much threw it out in favorite a very *VERY* weak storyline which would be more effective for one species.

Before release the toolbars/hotkeys bar had 9 slots to place items in the game which is find and dandy. There's also a "L and R" slots one for left the mouse button and the one for the right mouse button. Now they cut it to have 6 hotkeys with each being a pair of two slots which "L and R" slots. Here's the problem, materials such as blocks or tools that use double hands have two a button use and placing them in the toolbar eats up two slots at once. That has to be worse design choice they could made. It didn't help for the fact that cutting 3 slots for six with each having their own pair of L R slots just makes it harder to place things such as weapons, items, food, and blocks and it doesn't help when a certain item eats up two slots at once. I don't *need* six slots with a L slot and a R slot to tell me that I can use the L and R mouse buttons, I'm not *that* dumb Chucklefish I prefer to having the old toolbar/hotbarkeys instead.

In short, Starbound is a game I *would* not recommend especially with the design flaw of the toolbar interface and the weak storyline being forced to all species instead of being one, which feels shallow. Hopefully this would help you before you spend your money on. --Quadroline