STARBOUND: A Tale of Debt and Dismemberment

People always say "Modders can fix it, but they shouldn't have to", but is any of that true? Starbound, once indie darling, now a mod-ilated corpse, seems to tell the opposite story. How did this happen? And is it doomed to a slow death?

This is an opinion piece, and I'd love to hear yours! Please leave a comment on your thoughts about Starbound, and we can chat about it!

0:00 PART 0: Introduction
1:19 PART 1: The Alpha
10:43 PART 2: The Disappointment
23:05 PART 3: The Revolving Door of Unpaid Labor
28:11 PART 4: The Modders Fix it
37:22 PART 5: Paying Debts
45:59 PART 6: Or Dismemberment

For the list of tracks used in this video, visit here:

PBG Hardcore Clip from PBG Gameplayer Hardcore Series:

[MajinEvelyn]

My favorite moment in Starbound was watching an exposition cutscene so long that I starved to death during it in multiplayer

[lukasuhlenkamp]

Chapter 1: Hey this game sounds cool
Chapter 2: eh, went in the wrong direction
Chapter 3: UNPAID CHILD LABOR

[hotpaws_maths_and_science]

i wish somebody made an open source reimplementation of starbound engine, this would truly give the game a second life

[solouno]

just to add salt to the wound, in the alpha and beta, the races were unique: the glitch couldn't eat anything but tomatoes. The Florian were the only ones that could consume oculemon, boneboo or other fruits that were toxic for other characters, Hyotl could hold breath longer. And everyone had race dedicated weapons that varied in stats, making the novakids ranged weapons better and the florian melee ones the best.
The story was bad, in fact it was the worst addition.

[stormquake]

The early iteration of Starbound where it was pretty much a survival game in space was much better than the forced story progression we got. Digging deep into the cores of ice planets, having to keep fires nearby to stay warm, figuring out how to summon bosses to gain access to new sectors that had even more hostile environments you had to creatively approach.

Instead we ended up with these set dungeons, a bland story, an irritating required scanning mechanic, and the barrier of entry to other biomes being "just equip this pack and you're fine, lol."

Absolute tragedy, which was partly due to the lead dev being absolutely incompetent.

Oh well.

[zarnox]

I was so disappointed when they made the backstory for every race identical. You used to have a different backstory depending on which race you were, based on leaving your society (or just Earth being destroyed if human), but now everyone just happens to be on Earth…

[FelisImpurrator]

The weirdest game dev horror stories are the ones that remind you it is entirely possible to un-develop a game. Imagine the weird time travel scenario: "Play Starbound before it leaves early access!"

[XaviusNight]

The part that I hated was that when they added in the story, it became non-optional. You CANNOT progress the game without the story, which means you HAVE to follow the pre-chosen progression curve.
Want to make a sweet lava castle? Not until you've gotten so far along that you might've lost your inspiration.
Want to start with a new character, but you already know all the crafting requirements for your favorite tier of stuff? Too bad, you need another few hours of hunting through random places and hoping RNG doesn't screw you out of being able to progress the story.
Want to try mods? Congrats, if it doesn't completely redo the game, it STILL needs you to either skip ALL of the story at once or you HAVE to follow the story to progress still.

That update KILLED Starbound as a 'sandbox game'. It was simply an adventure game with a few minor sandboxing elements.

[jssaaj]

Terrain noise was actually toned down around the same time that jump height was reduced. It is much worse with the old values modded back in. However, some old dungeons with platforming built around old jump values never got updated to account for the change.

[Dashen_]

"Novakids were a fan race and i dont think the person who came up with them got compensated"
John Su. It was John Su who made the original Novakid piece, inspired by their OC, that later on became the base guide for the whole race

[drilltank-]

Man, mentioning the Alpha reminded me of just how much the game lost over the years. I've seen the temperature system mentioned, but another thing was biomes were actually divided into stratums based on difficulty. A garden world was a walk in a park, any of the lava planets had the highest difficulty possible.

Pets were at one point obscenely strong and durable and well worth going out of your way to catch.

Races may not have had unique attributes, or at least not strong ones, but they at least unique looking equipment that gave them a sense of identity alongside the dungeons and towns. Also, we lost a decent chunk of dungeons, biomes, and towns over time as well. The lore purge was a mistake.

The colorful biome used to be a lot more messed up because that's where people who encroached on the truth of Greenfinger wound up, transformed into neon-colored people who couldn't talk. The USCM bunkers with soldiers who had been driven insane with fear and paranoia. The Avian concepts seemed to die on the cutting room floor because we had the mysterious Thornwing only mentioned in lore books, but is implied to not only be the head of a mercenary company and has a vested, sinister interest in keeping the true nature of Kulex a secret and will literally bury people deep in some desolate planet's underground if they find out about it.

Plus, the Florans were specifically designed to combat something, and the Tentacomet of the time (later rebranded as the Ruin) was implied to be Greenfinger's creation as well that had slipped out of their grasp and destroyed Earth. Which, if I recall right, was implied to not have been completely destroyed but only partially consumed and even had survivors who would have long since been driven to madness if/when you ever managed to get to it.

There were supposed to be unique questlines for each race, different motivations to explore the stars and a decent number of mysteries to solve. But it really just boils down to the fact that the lead dev's a manchild.

Like, I remember how much people just *hated* traveling down to a planet's core to repair the ship's FTL drive. It was a long, slow, tedious slog because the closer you got to where Core Fragments spawn, the tougher the ground got. Dirt became stone, stone got tougher, and finally you might as well have had a material comparable to Minecraft's Obsidian but in layers dozens of blocks thick. Then you had to go all the way back up, likely though the same shaft you had to dig to get that far. People just used softcore difficulty and died in lava as fast travel, eating the pixel loss because as you noted, Pixels are easy to come by.

What was the lead dev's response? Change softcore so you dropped all items on death.

Not *fix* anything, no. Not give players an incentive to explore more, or just implement the 'teleport from anywhere' mechanic they did later. No, the message was loud and clear. 'How DARE you cheese your way out of MY glorious vision! You peons FORGET that I. AM. GOD. You will MINE these fragments as I dictate, you will NOT play this game ANY other way.'

(Of course at the time saving and quitting out of the game had the same effect of dropping you back on the ship with no repercussions, but nobody tell him that.)

So yeah, no surprise that he turned out to be a piece of shit who exploited the work of others to make money, then ran away once (I presume) the list of easy victims dried up.

[coach]

Terraria Overhaul is a nice way of re-imagining the game, but the base game is good.
Starbound Overhaul would be a straight improvement.

[SpectreSkirt]

"Starbound is a well-optimized game." -Biggest inside joke among both the modding and roleplay communities.

[bigmannn]

I do find it funny how the 6 different races have unique backgrounds to them and different ways you can interact with them in the story while the novakids are kind of just "Yeah we are space cowboys"

[briandarnell]

I wish starbound stayed more in line with it's original vision.
Then we got a story mode.

[PinkMawile]

I remember in the early life of Starbound, when it had interesting temperature mechanics. That said, I still prefer the physics of Starbound over Terraria. But I think the biggest problem with the game is that that gameplay cycle was broken, kind of like FO4 oddly enough. Interacting with the colony system and other settlements should have been the core of the gameplay loop, but instead it was just there as a loot grab and quest hubs for the main story. You can play the entire game without touching the colony system at all, and I think that's sad. Throw in like you said, the simplification of mechanics and empty updates. I also found mods just made overly complex tech trees.

[hydraslair]

I used to talk to Demanrisu on the Chucklefish chat, a chat where the Devs hung out often. At some point I asked them how to get into the Starbound development, and (I now realize) I was basically told not to.

Only now I can understand why.

[ZuoKalp]

I still remember the first "death" of Terraria. We fans were truly sad because that meant no more updates, so when Starbound was announced, it was the first time that I remember truly felling hype for a project.

After the major disappointed that was the release of the alpha, I stopped feeling for hype traps. That is the reason why I was already ready for the disappointing No Man Sky Release: I still remembered Starbound.

At least Terraria came back from the death and gave us some amazing content updates until it's definitive but happy development death (even when it was already awesome back then), and even No Man Sky managed to pull one of the best 180 in game development history.

[superbro]

Starbound, I feel, is entering an era of modding where people are breaking new ground and surpassing these percieved 'limits'. Lua, as a coding language, is incredibly versatile and has kept games like Roblox alive for 15 years. That said, since everything in Starbound's modding is coded in Lua, it's more than possible to recode a complete overhaul with the help of a large team. Exhibit A being Frackin' Universe. Additionally, a competitor to FU has recently entered the limelight, under the name Arcana. By implementing a few new mechanics, as well as integrating magic into a sci-fi setting in a convincing way, Arcana flips the entire game on it's head and implements brand new possibilities for play: Such as a Wizard playthrough, restricting yourself to staves, wands, or other energy-hungry weapons that don't resemble guns.

[deevee]

What made me lose all interest in Starbound is how you teleport to every boss fight and mission.
In - for example - Terraria, you can prepare an arena for the fight to make it easier, but it takes work and planning and effort and there's so many ways to go about it, it's fun and makes the whole fight all the more satisfying.
Starbound? You teleport in front of a big robot and shoot it until it dies. A boss fight becomes a gear check and you cannot do anything about it. It sucks.