6 Reasons Why You Should Be Excited About Starbound

5. The Presentation

There's an aerial lasgun strike bound to happen somewhere around here.

The Starbound universe is built from blocks (the main reason this game looks similar to Terraria), but features beautifully round planets and world objects. The synthesis between these two extremes is very well executed. The only reason blocks are used is that it's the easiest and most user-friendly way of world generation and manipulation. It works great, and that's what matters.

The colors are rich and vibrant, while the textures look well detailed. There's an abnudance of great ingame effects, too. Lightning looks very impressive, but the atmospherical filters (rain, snow, spores...) are pretty too. Such thingies are all randomly generated and depend on the surface temperature and climate of the planet you're currently on. These parameters are built on even more randomly generated guidelines, such as the planet's distance from the local sun (!). There's a fair amount of finesse we've seen, too. Trees sway on the wind, for example. Even taking them down is eye candy, as they will crash towards the side opposite from where you were standing while cutting.

While swimming in oceans, the water will distort sun shafts and the light will refract as it does in real life. Seeing effects such as these in a NES-like platformer game is impressive, to say the least. As vigorous and lively as some planets might be, scary dungeons and hellish landscapes will also be making appearances. Here, the temperatures will fall/rise and you'll be forced to wear proper protection, not to mention portable light sources, if your destination is underground.