Starbound

Starbound excels as a crafting and exploration game, as a 2D platformer with varied and engaging combat, and as a Zelda-esque story RPG with a detailed world and memorable alien cultures to interact with. The sheer volume of different kinds of locations to discover, items to craft and build great structures with, and flashy ways to vanquish aliens prevent any part of the experience from getting boring quickly.

A charming space sandbox that will keep you busy and entertained for hours.

If you’re a fan of games like Minecraft and Terraria, Starbound is not to be missed. It can keep you enchanted for hours, whether you’re playing solo or on a server with friends

I find it difficult to picture the person who wouldn’t enjoy Starbound. Parts, sure, but the whole is this sincere, incredibly ambitious sandbox that’s as full of charm, and space-faring pirate penguins, as it is stuff to build and places to explore. And whatever you do, if you decide to add this digital galaxy to your collection, make sure to blackmail some friends into picking it up.

Starbound is full of whimsy, surprise, and strange little interactions. It’s a universe unto itself, just begging to be explored.

Starbound is a game that comes highly recommended from us here at GF and, in summary is a far superior space exploration game to Starfield – and it has a sense of humour.

Starbound on Xbox is a game of unfulfilled potential. The core experience is still engaging, with an expansive galaxy to explore, fun crafting mechanics, and a charming aesthetic. However, poor optimization for console players, awkward UI navigation, and the absence of mod support hold it back from being a truly great port.

While Starbound may not fully deliver on its lofty promises, there's enough charm and content here to justify a look—especially for fans of the genre willing to weather some turbulence for the sake of adventure. Just be prepared to face its challenges with patience, or better yet, start on casual mode and let the game's better qualities shine through its rougher aspects.

It tries to be a little of everything and succeeds but it doesn’t really do anything that well, and because of that, it’s not a game I can recommend. Everything takes too long to do.

Starbound is one of the very few games that gets both "open world" and "sandbox" done right. The amount of activities available is astounding and the best part is you can avoid them all, if you wish to do just that.