Starbound Weekend
I actually have a lot of gaming stuff I’d like to talk about from this weekend, but I’m going to start this week out posting about what I played the most — Starbound.
It’s been a while since I’ve revisited Starbound, though it’s maintained it’s spot as an installed game on my desktop. Syn and I started up a game back when it came out of early access, but the last time I posted about it was back in 2016.
Wow! Has it been that long since we last explored this game?
When Syn asked me what I wanted to play on Saturday, I suggested we take a peek at where we left off in Starbound. I had no idea that a few hours would turn into a whole weekend, or that we’d drag poor Amoon into the game.
Base Building 101
We returned to our old game to find everything still where we left it in our little earthen hovel.
We decided to check out the next of our story quests, which was to find a Floran settlement and scan a bunch of artifacts. Once that was done, we turned our attention to the poor state of our base.
I did a major overhaul of the living area…
And Syn started building up a greenhouse alongside of it.
We got a produce shipment box, which you can hardly see in the dark, but it’s on the top level of the greenhouse. We started to focus on selling produce and food, which is something we’ve never done before. It has a bit of a Harvest Moon vibe to it.
We also bought livestock for the first time!
Starbound With Friends
Later on Saturday, we convinced Amoon to join us in his first Starbound session. He wasn’t so sure about the game due to the art style, but I think he’s more or less enjoyed his time playing so far (I hope).
Syn and I started over on new characters (it’s not as much fun to be twinked out on your first Starbound experience), and we started building a new base on a new home planet. This time, I went directly for a wood base, and we found some neat fairy lights on some random planet, which I brought back with me.
This eventually evolved into a nice little structure with a huge two-tier garden off to the left.
I hired my first ever crew members for my ship, and we added a colonizer do-hickey to the home base that brought in new NPCs. From time to time, the NPCs give random quests — sometimes this brings another colonist, sometimes this just rewards loot bags, and sometimes it actually unlocks new features, such as the Pokemon-like pet capture system.
We also unlocked the Mech system, which allows you to explore specific spots in space. Sometimes these are just anomalies, sometimes they’re hostile or friendly ships.
It’s a neat system with a light space-shooter vibe. You can build a custom mech when you find the blueprints for upgrades and have the right materials. That’s going to be a while for me, though.
We also did a lot of exploration, including fuel mining on a moon… which gets this crazy purple ghost monster angry at you. Apparently, it gives chase the more fuel you gather.
There’s still so much yet to discover and build in this game. We’ve only scratched the surface, and have hardly finished any of the story at all!
It’s really come a long way from the game that I started playing in 2013. Hard to believe it’s been that long. We always have a good time with it, though!
