I m a space cowboy made of stellar gas and I ve spent the day farming. Starbound [official site] is a gargantuan galactic playground jam-packed with gunfights, planet-hopping adventures and tomb raiding, but I ve probably spent just as much tending to my crops, decorating and going on shopping sprees. I m utterly content.

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Starbound’s [official site] formal launch has been a long time coming, but at long last, the sci-fi sandbox will be officially released on July 22.

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The long-awaited Starbound [official site] combat update has arrived! Beside the expected host of conflict-related features, it also brings new areas, enemies, vehicles, and quests. Oh, and it’s come with a trailer. Come look, see:

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A huge Starbound [official site] update landed last night. It’s a stable version, as opposed to the experimental opt-in nightly updates, and adds a host of new features. The most important is a set of systems to allow for the establishment of colonies. Build a house and people will eventually move in – a more luxurious house will attract a better class of resident. Tied into that are improved behaviours for all NPCs, who will now interact with objects and each other. They might warm their hands by a fire or fall in love. Stuff like that. The changelog is here, and there’s also a summary in text and video form. The video is below.

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The Gera School of Game Development has one simple tenet: When in doubt, just add dogs. Our alumni is extensive, and includes but is not limited to a game with an Alsatian in it and Fable 2. Now being added to this list is the glorious two-dimensional Terraform-em-up Starbound [official site] which lets users have pets on board their personal space ships as of this week’s patch.

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Crafting requires commitment. How does a person wary of settling down survive in the barren worlds of Minecraft, Terraria and Starbound? A tale of tourism, travel and cooperative tension.

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What do you add to the game that has everything? Starbound’s procedural approach to space makes every planet a unique snowflake in an infinite sea of stars. Evidently, developers Chucklefish don’t think that’s enough and the next hefty update contains all manner of new content. There’s bowling, basketball bug catching, a new playable race, personal ship AI that can take on the appearance of a doltish golden horse, ship upgrades, a new tech system and loads of other bits and pieces. The video below shows all manner of new stuff and has managed to convince me that reinstalling when this goes live would be a fine idea.

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Proving once again that it’s somehow possible for indie studios to work on two games at once (!), Starbound developers Chucklefish have announced Wayward Tide. The top-down piratical action-adventure is being put together by a separate new four-person team. They’re still in the very early stages of development, but the grand vision is a 2-4 player competitive-coop booty-hunter full of treachery.

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There are already lots of things in Starbound. Even in beta, the game is a vast sandbox of possibility and weird cave-dwelling gum creatures that shriek and bounce at you like a pogo stick possessed by the soul of a deathrow inmate. It’s a big place, but this is only just the beginning. Previously, developer Chucklefish wriggly giggled out word of directors, mods, and a PVP endgame, but those lofty goals are in the far flung future. On the horizon, meanwhile, is a complete overhaul of the infinite voxel universe’s progression system, which is currently just a series of intergalactic gates. The plan, however, is to make it more like a Metroidvania that will ultimately split off into three main paths: adventuring, building, and farming. I can’t wait to have my own corral of horrifying night terror space sheep.

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Starbound is absurdly popular, which leaves people dying to know where the space exploration/crafting/fighting game, currently in alpha, is going to go next. Rather than drip that information out over a period of months with incrementally more revealing trailers, developers Chucklefish have just done big ol’ blog post full of information. Future features include: sweeping changes to the progression system; a PvP endgame set in ‘Sector X’; Director Mode, which lets you act as a kind of dungeon master; support for sharing user-made missions; and mods.

Oh, also Chucklefish themselves are opening an office, making a new game, and publishing a bunch of other people’s games. Geez. … [visit site to read more]