Terraria/Starbound/Edge of Space Comparison Thread

[MoonlightEmber]

Since the forums are being flooded with threads like this, we are creating this one to contain all such discussion to one post. Please use this thread to discuss similarities, differences, etc. Also, to help those genuinely wondering, here are some of the differences between the 3 games and what sets them apart:


Terraria: Terraria is of course the one that started it all, and got this genre off the ground. It's set in a fantasy setting, and features the well-loved formula of mining, building, crafting, and adventuring through a single map. It features adorable but deadly critters, ranged and melee combat as well as magic. There's not much one can say about what made this game great that people don't already know. It's Terraria!

Starbound: Starbound is about the endless expanse of the universe, roaming and exploring, and never knowing quite what you'll find on the next planet. It features, the familiar art style of Tiyuri, the pixel artist from Terraria, and for that reason is often confused as a direct sequel of Terraria. While it's not Terraria 2, it definitely hit the sweet spot for fans of a land, loot, leave, formula, and always leaves you wanting to check out just one more world. Combat is both ranged and melee (I personally love the huge 2-handed swords!) and works well with a sort of run and gun feel. You're always on the move, and always hacking, slashing or shooting something coming over the next hill. That being said, it's easy to find a peaceful low-level world to settle down and start a colony.

Edge of Space: Where Starbound and Terraria have a sort of laid-back, and almost tame atmosphere, Edge of Space is far more IN your face. EoS is heavily focused on survival and a much more Metroid-like experience. We do not have melee weapons at this time, so combat is centered around guns of varying types. Base building and defense are critical, and players are taught to use stationary turrets, defense drones, repair drones, and a variety of weapons, tools, and machines to protect their command center. The world is aware of the player, which triggers various types of local and world events. As the game progresses you will be tasked with terraforming the entire world back to a livable state.

To address the "which came first" argument, and the confusion about teams:

Terraria was developed by Re-Logic. Starbound is developed by Chucklefish. Edge of Space is developed by Handyman Studios. These are 3 distinct companies, and none of the teams are related. The connections are as follows: Tiyuri, the lead developer of Starbound, was the pixel artist for Terraria. Redigit, the lead developer of Terraria, is a good friend of the Handyman team, and has chosen to work with us on the crossover content. Aside from these things, the games are not "made by the same people."

In closing, each of these games shines for its own reasons, and it's not a question of competition. There is always room for another great game in the genre, and each one is a win for the players. I hope this will help clear up some of the questions and concerns. Again, feel free to discuss this topic here, but refrain from starting new threads, as they will be locked by the team and directed here. Stay awesome, guys!

[TITOMOSQUITO187]

OMG did you guys rip off 7 Days to Die!?

hahahahaha

justi kidding. Just trying to guess what the next "rip-off" accusation would be.

Great explanation of this gmae BTW. It makes me more interested in it.

[lPaladinl]

I'm still going to say this game ripped off Pong, which ripped off some of the first editions of Sonar Equipment.

[TITOMOSQUITO187]

You ever play those old football games with the red blinking dots on a portable? That baseball game with the red light dot where you pitched it and hit it vs another player?

I say that most gmaes ripped off those.

Anyways, something that is VERY important to me in these open world survival gmaes such as this is the addition of EVENTS. New things popping up that change the way you protect yourself. Something that Don't Starve failed to relaize and adapt to. Instead all their updates just included new enemies and maybe new biomes, but nothing new that changed what the player's survival strategy was. You survive your first winter in DS and you know how to survive everything else. Art direction was great and the game had a lot of potential, but ultimately I was disappointed with the direction, and that lack of EVENTS was the exact reason the game got stale fast. New events to change your survival strategy to me is the most important aspect to these survival games. Without them there is n new strategy, ad you jsut survive the same from Day 1 to Day 2001.

I thought this sounded more like Darkout than Starbound, although base defense isn't relaly necessary in Darkout. So they aren't much a like. Thats' more of an RPG and quest game. Darkout deserves more notice imo although I don't think it should be marketed as "complete" yet and the store page should call it an EA game.. >_>

[Pande]

I absolutely love the respectful and informational tone with which you summarized all three games.

"Each one is a win for the players." Perfectly said.

[PanSatyros]

Hey, miss community manager! I think youre doing a great job explaining things as they are.
I was a bit curious about this Terraria content thing and you explained it all perfectly - I think it's great that youre working with the Terraria lead dev.

The focus on base-defense really sounds interesting. The only thing that holds me back from a purchase is this Early-Access thing - I bought Starbound when it first came out and I ran out of content way too quick (progression system incomplete).
So I would really like to know how long you are planning on staying in Early-Access stage. Can you make any estimations about when the game will be launching or how much still needs to be done before its ready?

[EmZiom]

" EoS is heavily focused on survival " Does it means that EOS is harder than terraria and starbound??

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by EmZiom:

" EoS is heavily focused on survival " Does it means that EOS is harder than terraria and starbound??

While we're balancing the early game to be less so, I would say that's fair to say, yes.

[Qelris]

I hope you don't mind me asking here instead of making a new topic.

I'm also someone that don't like buying Early Access games. So far, the only Early Access I've bought was Starbound and it was sure worth it. Me and 2 friends somehow managed to get 40 hours in 1 playthrough, and that's without mods, with the current version of the game(and there isn't that much to do tbh). As the game keeps updating until it gets officially release, it will change. So that means more playthroughs for me and my friends, aka well worth the money spent, especially if we get more friends in, more fun. But what about EoS?

If I were to buy the game right now, and give the second copy to my friend, how many hours should we be looking into until we beat everything available in the current version of the game? I just want an approximation, I know playtime varies a lot between people. Or in other words, how much is there to do?

Also, is hosting a server as simple as Terraria and Starbound? Forward ports and done?

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by mysmae:

I hope you don't mind me asking here instead of making a new topic.

I'm also someone that don't like buying Early Access games. So far, the only Early Access I've bought was Starbound and it was sure worth it. Me and 2 friends somehow managed to get 40 hours in 1 playthrough, and that's without mods, with the current version of the game(and there isn't that much to do tbh). As the game keeps updating until it gets officially release, it will change. So that means more playthroughs for me and my friends, aka well worth the money spent, especially if we get more friends in, more fun. But what about EoS?

If I were to buy the game right now, and give the second copy to my friend, how many hours should we be looking into until we beat everything available in the current version of the game? I just want an approximation, I know playtime varies a lot between people. Or in other words, how much is there to do?

Also, is hosting a server as simple as Terraria and Starbound? Forward ports and done?

Normally I would have a more solid guess, but right now, we're about to push so many more updates it's hard to put a good number to that for you. As for server hosting yes, port forward, click server on the launcher, enter a world name, and start server. :)

[Piece o' Hans]

I own all three games and Edge of Space is the only game out of the three that really gave me a "everything is completely alien feeling". That can be both good and bad depending on the player, I really like it, others might hate it with a passion.

However, the stations/tutorials I do not like! They are boring, grindy, immersion breaking, and I feel like I'm being held back. I'm the kind of "gamer" that wants to dive in, and have the game kick my ass a couple of times.

The controls are a bit strange too, but it's not hard to get used to them. The mining is rather inaccurate at close range. You die relatively easily (compared to Terraria and Starbound), but that's not a bad thing in my book.

Right now the game feels a bit grindy, and is a bit laggy. However I feel like it's a diamond in the rough, waiting to be cut to perfection.

I look forward to seeing it develop!

[Potato]

The new limited offer just popped up but i've never heard of this game before. So how is the gameplay? And how is the game world? Is it randomly generated and does it have an end? Does the game crash? And how's the multiplayer if there is any at this early stage? I read that starbound has travelling to other planets so does this game also have planet travelling or does it all happen on just one planet?
What's the coolest and interesting thing about playing this game?

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by éclairé:

The new limited offer just popped up but i've never heard of this game before. So how is the gameplay? And how is the game world? Is it randomly generated and does it have an end? Does the game crash? And how's the multiplayer if there is any at this early stage? I read that starbound has travelling to other planets so does this game also have planet travelling or does it all happen on just one planet? :pandastunned:
What's the coolest and interesting thing about playing this game?

All of the questions! Let me take these one at a time to be sure I don't miss anything :)

1) gameplay is similar to it's genre-mates in that it's a 2D sidescroller, but EoS takes a different direction and brings in base building and defense, a gas generation system, complex power grid system, etc. It's a far more challenging environment,

2) The game world in EoS is randomly generated, and takes place on the shattered remains of a planet. There will be an end game, though getting there can be done entirely in your own time, and you are free to explore in between any of the progression.

3) we're very happy with the stability right now. We have a few folks having some issues, but as we're getting logs from them we're pounding out these problems very quickly. Multiplayer just came back yesterday, that's what we're celebrating with the buy one get one :)

4) We don't have other planets, we have alternate locations through wormholes. These can be anything from an entirely new map, to a dungeon or boss fight. There are so many possible directions we can take with this <3

5) The coolest feature in the game is definitely terraforming, and it's about to be put in game for the first time. Terraforming a location will physically change the terrain, and everything about it, including the baddies that inhabit that kind of biome. It's gonna have a huge impact on gameplay, as you'll have to actually maintain your hold on the world. If your terraforming equipment gets destroyed, the world will take back over!

[koholos]

You know, I've been keeping an eye on both this and Starbound for several months, and I'm still a bit torn between which one I would most enjoy, based on what I like in games. So I will probably continue to look a little bit more. But I really want to compliment LadyAijou for being (as far as I can tell, not having played either SB or EoS) both honest and respectful about all the games involved. It's nice to see someone on a dev team who is willing to acknowledge when they're paying homage, and who are confident enough in their own product to build up others.

So thank you very much for being a breath of fresh air. That alone is almost enough to make me buy the game, even if I thought I'd hate it.

And now, questions. If I may?

Originally posted by LadyAijou:

1) gameplay is similar to it's genre-mates in that it's a 2D sidescroller, but EoS takes a different direction and brings in base building and defense, a gas generation system, complex power grid system, etc. It's a far more challenging environment,

So, I'm a huge fan of Dwarf Fortress (if you've heard of that? I know it's somewhat niche.)
Do you think I might find more here to satisfy the part of me that craves the fun of building the perfect death trap than I get out of terraria (where combat has never really been super-satisfying?)
Specifically, how smart is the enemy AI? (Or is it planned to be? I understand it's still in dev.)
Also, could you talk a little more about "gas generation"? What does that mean in this context?

5) The coolest feature in the game is definitely terraforming, and it's about to be put in game for the first time. Terraforming a location will physically change the terrain, and everything about it, including the baddies that inhabit that kind of biome. It's gonna have a huge impact on gameplay, as you'll have to actually maintain your hold on the world. If your terraforming equipment gets destroyed, the world will take back over!

Hmm... that sounds really neat. I love changing world states. And this sounds like a tug-of-war world state change? Will it be possible to strategically terraform, say making weather to shape things? Or will it be more about changing the landscape itself? (If you have a link to the dev diary, I'm not scared of reading, especially if you are the sort of people who talk about why you want to design things. I eat that up.)

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by koholos:

You know, I've been keeping an eye on both this and Starbound for several months, and I'm still a bit torn between which one I would most enjoy, based on what I like in games. So I will probably continue to look a little bit more. But I really want to compliment LadyAijou for being (as far as I can tell, not having played either SB or EoS) both honest and respectful about all the games involved. It's nice to see someone on a dev team who is willing to acknowledge when they're paying homage, and who are confident enough in their own product to build up others.

So thank you very much for being a breath of fresh air. That alone is almost enough to make me buy the game, even if I thought I'd hate it.

And now, questions. If I may?

Originally posted by LadyAijou:

1) gameplay is similar to it's genre-mates in that it's a 2D sidescroller, but EoS takes a different direction and brings in base building and defense, a gas generation system, complex power grid system, etc. It's a far more challenging environment,

So, I'm a huge fan of Dwarf Fortress (if you've heard of that? I know it's somewhat niche.)
Do you think I might find more here to satisfy the part of me that craves the fun of building the perfect death trap than I get out of terraria (where combat has never really been super-satisfying?)
Specifically, how smart is the enemy AI? (Or is it planned to be? I understand it's still in dev.)
Also, could you talk a little more about "gas generation"? What does that mean in this context?

5) The coolest feature in the game is definitely terraforming, and it's about to be put in game for the first time. Terraforming a location will physically change the terrain, and everything about it, including the baddies that inhabit that kind of biome. It's gonna have a huge impact on gameplay, as you'll have to actually maintain your hold on the world. If your terraforming equipment gets destroyed, the world will take back over!

Hmm... that sounds really neat. I love changing world states. And this sounds like a tug-of-war world state change? Will it be possible to strategically terraform, say making weather to shape things? Or will it be more about changing the landscape itself? (If you have a link to the dev diary, I'm not scared of reading, especially if you are the sort of people who talk about why you want to design things. I eat that up.)

Tell ya what, I'm off for the evening shortly here, but if you want to toss me a friend request I can go more in depth with ya one on one as I have time. I don't want to derail this thread too far :)

[Qelris]

Me and my friend really don't like our first impressions on the game so far. I will most likely give it another try sometimes later and obviously as the game gets more polished, but I don't know about my friend.

Everything was so awkward.. My friend stopped after the Gamma Access thingy(the 3rd tutorial map). I went on and crafted the Alpha Armory map, got the recipe for one gun out of 5(I think?) and had no further objectives, so I simply quit the game after that. Also, I found out we are on some kind of asteroid looking planet or something? Fell down for like 30s, hit the ground, yet it looked like surface still.

What are those blue pods next to your hp bar? We lost them all, yet nothing special happened.