Starbound Beta December 4th

[sly 3 4 me]

So I've seen a few people talking about Starbound in the past, and decided to make a new topic rather than reviving one of the old topics. The first phase of beta access is launching on December 4th with a decent portion of the game completed (And multiplayer!). I'll just take this excerpt from the detailed game description rather than try and explain a game I haven't actually played yet.

In Starbound, you take on the role of a character who’s just fled from their home planet, only to crash-land on another. From there you’ll embark on a quest to survive, discover, explore and fight your way across an infinite universe.

You’ll encounter procedurally generated creatures and weapons, discover populated villages and abandoned temples. Explore planets dotted with dungeons, eyeball trees and treasure. Make use of over a hundred materials and over one thousand in-game objects to build a sprawling modern metropolis or a sleepy secluded cabin in the woods, and do all of it alone or with friends!

Starbound lets you live out your own story of space exploration, discovery and adventure. Settle down and farm the land, hop from planet to planet claiming resources, or make regular visits to populated settlements, taking on jobs and earning a living. NPCs are scattered about the worlds, offering quests and challenges for those looking for a little extra excitement in their lives.

The phases of the beta are as followed:





Website

[Lucifer]

I couldn't quite find how exactly you sign up for the beta, do you have to pre-order it? I might do so, looks really fun.

[sly 3 4 me]

I couldn't quite find how exactly you sign up for the beta, do you have to pre-order it? I might do so, looks really fun.

Ah, right, forgot to include the overall process. On the site it listed a few possibilities of the beta (They all require the purchase of the game itself for $15, which includes access to the beta and the eventual release). They decided on managing the beta through Steam, as it has the option to auto-update the game (they mentioned there being numerous updates throughout the beta, many a day at times). But yeah, for the beta you purchase the game and they are sending the Steam beta keys on December 4th to your e-mail used to purchase the game.

[11clock]

I'm going to be waiting for the second stage of beta before I play it. I pre-ordered the game months ago.

[Lucifer]

There hasn't really been any discussion of Starbound post-release, so I figure I'll start it off by saying - this game is awesome! I never really got into Terraria, it was entertaining but I always found myself frustrated with it in some way or another. Whether it was the constant barrage of enemies jumping on me whenever I was mining or the loot system that always seemed to bring out the worst in people (either people feeling the need to run ahead to get equipment first, or complaining constantly about the people who do that, both of these attitudes are equally frustrating to deal with), something always made me stop playing. Because of the easily traversable & infinite amount of worlds Starbound doesn't really encounter that second problem, and the first is definitely toned down. The attitudes I mentioned still have the capability to exist but not to the same degree, if you want to be able to take on the next boss in a timely manner you've really got to equip everybody equally, and because you can just travel somewhere else any time you want there isn't really that limited-resources factor.

I've had to start a new character a couple times so far and I've enjoyed each experience, the combat can get dull at times and thus far there's not a huge amount of diversity in monster attacks, but there's enough to keep my interested so far - and that's more than I could ever say about Terraria. I'd recommend checking it out, it's got that Minecraft feel of development where the developers are filled with humor & active in the community, I'm really looking forward to watching it progress.