What is Starbound? Well it's that time of year again where I revisit some old games and I revisited Starbound! What can I say?

I've followed Starbound a long time. A real long time. Since before the alpha I was enthralled by the game's personality, and wanted to see if just maybe it could deliver on translating that personality into a big, sandboxy romp of a good time. Well, the verdict is: no.

There are why's and reasons I'm sure Chucklefish could give, but as far as I'm concerned, the game isn't much more engaging than day one of the beta. Less so, probably, because in this 'complete' state, my naive optimism is quashed.

Starbound is an amalgemation of decent ideas with no follow-through. The most interesting aspects of the game, the alien races, exploration, building... they all feel somehow lackluster. Starbound is a big puddle with no depth. Now puddles can be fine to splash in, but Starbound promised more than a puddle. The game disposed of all its interesting concepts, all of its unique characterization of alien races, all of its everything in favor of a bland storyline and less-than-stellar (heh) gameplay.

Combat isn't particularly interesting, the races have all blended together thanks to the soul-crushingly generic Protectorate, their lore and settlements are no deeper than they were on day 1 of the beta, and worse, many of them have lost a lot of what made them unique and interesting.

Beneath Starbound, there is Starbound -1. All the promise and interesting concepts, a game of wasted art and writing assets buried by rushed development and an inability to commit to a project. Like a highschooler throwing together a collection of short writings when they realize that writing a full novella is difficult and their motivations and inspirations are fluid. All buried underneath what we got.

And that's a shame. Chucklefish mismanaged their time, their money, and their priorities. And the product they provided was a tragedy of overpromising and underachieving.