$14.99Starbound A Whole Universe to Call Home
Starbound strands you in space with a broken ship and a whole procedurally generated universe to fix it with. Beam down with co-op friends, repair, explore, build towns, farm, capture monsters, and chase the story campaign together, all in easy drop-in co-op.
Is Starbound worth it?
Starbound is worth it if…
- you like relaxed co-op nights built around exploring and building together
- you want drop-in co-op where friends can join for one planet and leave
- you like splitting jobs, with one farming while another explores or builds
- you want a long shared save with quests, colonies, ships, and mods
Screenshots
A broken ship and a shared universe
You start lost in space with a damaged ship, so you and your co-op friends beam down to gather materials and get flying again. From there the universe opens up: planets to hop between, dungeons to clear, temples and cities to find, plus trees with eyes and mischievous penguins. It suits a loose group night where nobody needs the same schedule.
Build cabins, castles, or orbital chaos
You collect hundreds of materials and over two thousand objects, then put them toward almost anything: a sleepy cabin in the woods, a medieval castle, an underwater arcade, a space station. Decorate and expand your own starship too, and treat it as the group base between trips. Building stays simple and low-pressure, so one friend can farm and cook while another places walls and furniture.
Quests, bosses, and captured monsters
You can also capture unique monsters to fight beside you, gather fuel, hunt treasure, and take side quests from settlements. Combat is passable rather than punishing, with exploration doing most of the work. Pick Casual if you want no hunger, Survival if you want to eat and drop items on death, or Hardcore if you enjoy permanent goodbyes.
Seven races and plenty of jobs
You choose from 7 playable races and customize your character, then settle into whatever role fits the evening. Become an intergalactic landlord, farm the land, collect rare creatures, run colonies and collect gifts from tenants, and invite the ones who like you to join your ship crew. Mechs, tech powers like dashing and morphing, boats, and hover bikes widen how your party moves. Mod support adds new items, races, planets, dungeons, and quests, which gives long-running co-op groups a way to refresh the universe.
Good to know before you beam down?
How does co-op actually work?
That makes it easy to keep one universe as the group save while people come and go, exploring planets, clearing dungeons, building, or working on colonies together.
What do we do together after the ship is repaired?
Follow the story campaign for quests, dungeons, and bosses, or ignore heroics and colonize planets, farm, collect creatures, capture monsters, hunt treasure, and build. The game supports both paths, so a group can mix story nights with pure sandbox nights.
Is it hard to learn or punishing to die?
It has three modes for different appetites: Casual removes the need to eat, Survival adds hunger and item drops on death, and Hardcore adds permadeath. Crafting and travel take some learning, and progression leans on finding better gear and exploring new star types, so pick Casual for a calm shared game.
What keeps a long co-op save interesting?
Variety comes from procedurally generated planets, weapons, and monsters, plus colonies, tenants, ship crew, ship decoration, and upgrades.
