Starbound - indie game beta launch Terraria clone sells ridiculously well

[Wampus]

Starbound was available on Steam from 4th Dec. If you don't know its a Terraria clone, sort of Terraria in space. Really its so similar to Terraria in its core mechanics and concept it could be an unofficial sequel imo. There has been a lot of hype about it for an indie game. I was amazed to see it reached the number one slot of the 'top sellers' on Steam yesterday and is still there, despite being a beta version. That's kind of amazing.  Am a little jealous. 

Anyone else get the game? As a huge Terraria nerd I had to.  Played it for 10 hours. Unsurprisingly it very much feels like a beta, kind of like a giant warehouse with more space than it can fill at the moment.

[erico]

Looking good, I wonder about the multiplayer online as this kind of game fits my bill only if I can cooperatively play with a couple friends.
I think those sales are a bit expected. The author did a good move making a huge update on Terraria prior to launch Starbound.

[Wampus]

Multiplayer works after some configuration with port forwarding and whatnot. Right now there is basic mining, farming, building, crafting and exploration, none of which are as much fun as Terraria yet. Give it a year and there could be lots more content and perhaps more of a overall purpose to what you do in-game.

[Wampus]

I had a look into the development time for this game. Collectively the coders must have spent many years on this and it shows. Makes me want to team up with people here in the thriving Vancouver indie scene.

Had a chance to play multiplayer for a decent stretch now. This game is amazing for multiplayer. One great touch is having multiple musical instruments you can find and then use to play collectively in a band, after downloading music in ABC format. That adds a lot of fun. The trouble with multiplayer is that quite a lot is left up to the client rather than the server. Because of that I was able to mod my player character to have god-like capabilities. I was practically invulnerable with infinite resources and curious powers far beyond what should be available in the normal game. I had a lot of fun with that, making crazy stuff happen and helping out noobs learn the game. Unfortunately it also enables griefers to do terrible, terrible damage - even crash servers by overloading them. Last night I had a party of 6-8 people I was zooming around the universe in, going to mysterious planets and exploring. Then someone decided to mess with my personal spaceship and made it so that anyone who came aboard would instantly die or be trapped by nasty stuff and this was a permanent change that couldn't be undone. The crazy thing is I couldn't kick them off my team, so I had to watch as they tore my ship to pieces and did away with my teammates. All this, it seems, because I didn't spend enough time complimenting them on their terrible looking spaceship.