It's been a little over three years since the side-scrolling extraterrestrial sandbox adventure game Starbound first went up for preorder. The game has come a long way since, through multiple major updates, mod support, and, a couple of months ago, news that it's finally (almost) ready to leave Early Access. Today came the next big step: The announcement of an official launch date of July 22.
Yay @StarboundGame finally has a release date... and it's super soon! :D pic.twitter.com/fPSZ1hC29nJuly 8, 2016
After ~5 years, the game we set out to make finally exists, and to say that it all feels a bit surreal would be a massive understatement! developer Chucklefish wrote. While Starbound will be finished in two weeks, this isn t the end. We will continue to update and support Starbound for as long as we can. We ve got loads of cool ideas we couldn t fit into 1.0 but hope to put into future updates.
Starbound begins with players lost in space on a damaged ship, which leaves them forced to travel to the alien planet below in search of the supplies needed to fix it. Get that done, and the procedurally-generated universe is yours to explore. It offers seven playable races, drop-in/drop-out online co-op play, randomly generated dungeons and monsters, crafting, PvP, and all kinds of other stuff that makes the elongated development cycle a little easier to understand. It also has pleasingly light system requirements:
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP or later
Processor: Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB graphics memory and directx 9.0c compatible gpu
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 3 GB available space
Recommended:
OS: Windows XP or later
Processor: Core i3
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Discrete GPU capable of directx 9.0c
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 4 GB available space
You can find out more about the game at playstarbound.com.
