Starbound Hits v 1.0 Soon

With $1m in crowd-funding and over $2m in pre-order sales in 2 years on Steam's Early Access program, Starbound has had a long and successful journey to release. That journey is coming to an end shortly as the game is being readied for the final v1.0 release. The title is the first to be developed in house by ChuckleFish games.

With the game going gold, that's not the end of regular updates as the company are promising to continue to develop new and exciting content for their players. They say though that this means instead of working on the engine and background mechanics, they can now focus on additional content instead.

With v1.0, a number of updates will be coming. The main bulk of which is the much anticipated story mode. The game has up until now focused primarily on the sandbox content. Whilst that will continue to be the mani focus of the game, those who want a campaign to put it all in context will be pleased to hear that one is indeed coming. 

The story consists of eight instanced missions that take the player from overrun mining facilities to ancient temples and sunken libraries. To unlock missions you’ll be given quests which utilise many different aspects of the Starbound sandbox to send you searching for clues. Clues can be found in many different ways, from visiting towns and talking to the locals, exploring dangerous dungeons, to building colonies and completing quests. This will also help serve as a tutorial to new players who might otherwise be overwhelmed by all the options available to them in the sandbox mode. 

In addition to the story, players can enjoy new side-quests, new dungeons and the ability to recruit colonists as crew members. There's a new crafting tree and the hunger mechanic has been brought back in an updated form. The pet system is being revamped and the UI is getting a little extra spit and polish. On top of all this, there's plans to support Steam Workshop so players can share their mods.