: Terraria is dead... Long live... Starbound?

So, a few days ago I learned that Terraria is, well, dead. Redigit, the guy who, from what I understand, single-handedly programmed the game, has stopped working on the game, because he feel there's no more progression to be made. He says that everything he can do with the game now "feels like sideways progression", and that "nothing really excites (him)". So he considers the game finished, and has moved on to work on something new. No mention of what that is yet, though.

While I do understand his decision, and can't say I'm too affected by it, as I sort of lost interest in Terraria quite a while ago now, it is very sad to see Terraria "die" so soon. The game had massive potential, in my eyes, and while a lot of it has been fulfilled in one way or the other, I'm sure there's still quite a lot more that could be done. But yeah, if he doesn't feel it anymore, then there's really no point in him working on it anymore.

One other reason why the development of Terraria has stopped is because Tiyuri, the guy who created most, maybe all, of the graphics for the game, has moved on to form another game company called Chucklefish. There he's working on another, potentially competing, game, called Starbound. And to be quite honest, Starbound seems to be more of an actual game than Terraria can ever be.

There's not much known about Starbound yet, as it is still a relatively new project, but it will be a sandbox-type game, just like Terraria is, only with more of a purpose. There will be an actual "hub" in the game, a Space Station that you go back to, that is your base, and that you improve over time, conducting research and filling with people that, I'm guessing, you meet around the universe. And yes, that means that you're not limited to one world at a time, you can travel back and forth between planets that will be randomly generated the first time you visit them. But unlike Terraria, it seems these worlds will be generated with more care. They will not seem as empty and "chaotic". And there will be no artificial "edge" to the worlds; If you go far enough in one direction, you'll get back to where you started. 

There will also be "quests and story driven missions" in the game. And that is something that I really missed in Terraria; A purpose. I mean, Terraria does what it does really well, but after a while I just lose interest because there's no real point to it, no direction. While I do like the sandbox-style gameplay very much, it feels very hollow without some sort of quest or goal system.

The graphic style of Starbound will be sort of similar to Terraria, in that it's very much inspired by SNES-era graphics. It will be a lot more detailed than Terraria, though. To be quite honest, the graphics is a very big reason why I decided to play Terraria over Minecraft. I've always loved pixelart and particularly SNES-style graphics. And to me, Minecraft looks, well... Downright ugly. So, it was an easy choice. And Starbound just looks freaking sweet.

Looks quite nice, doesn't it?

Starbound will also have an actual combat system, it seems, something which both Terraria and Minecraft lacks. From what I understand, you don't get hurt just by touching an enemy. Any enemy, player or monster, will have to actually attack you, that means go through an attack animation, in order to hurt you. You can also block attacks, which will build up some sort of counter-attack charge. And probably a lot more, but they haven't talked too much about it yet. The main point is, there will be more to it than just randomly flailing your weapons. So, yeah. Vewt!

There's quite a lot more to the game as well, but most of it is just mentioned without giving much detail. And they say there's also quite a lot that they haven't announced yet. So, yeah. While it is very sad that Terraria has "died" so soon, I'm really looking forward to playing Starbound instead. Whenever it's released. It's not even in beta yet.