14 DAY TRIAL // Developer Chucklefish dropped a brand new update for the stable branch of Starbound, its two-dimensional pixelated building and survival game.
The update adds a bunch of neat functionality to Starbound, including bookmarks and teleporters for planets, which replace the "Home" planet feature. This means existing characters will lose their home planets, so you had better write down your planet's coordinates or leave your ship in orbit before applying the patch.
However, this inconvenience is a small price to pay when you think about the big picture. You can now save planet locations in the cockpit navigation interface, and place and register teleporters on planets in order to navigate freely from one to another.
Teleporters are much more versatile than just being able to beam to your home planet and another planet you're exploring, encouraging players to go out and see the world.
In addition to this, all player ships will be inhabited by a new non-combat pet that corresponds to the character's race, which players can feed, play with, and build a house for.
More perils and rewards
The developers have added an entire new biome to the already extensive array of worlds you can find while exploring the universe in Starbound. This time around, it's a pretty gross one, in the form of the Slime Caves, including a bunch of unique items and a new furniture set.
The Slime Caves can be found on Radioactive worlds, and if that's not enough for you, you can also set sail, so to say, to The Ark, a huge and ancient ruin that offers a couple of clues regarding Starbound's overarching plot.
Furthermore, a number of tweaks and fixes have been implemented, including an overhaul to non-playable character pathfinding algorithms, which means that monsters and NPCs are now better at jumping and navigating their environments, and should become stuck much less frequently.
Starbound is currently available on Steam Early Access, with no release date in sight. The developers are hammering away at the game, constantly adding new content, and the community has received their efforts very well so far.