Starbound

Starbound

I loved Terraria so much that I bought Starbound during Early Access.

I have a love/hate relationship with crafting games. I really enjoy this process:

• Gather raw materials
• Make something basic
• Combine basic things to make something better
• Use better thing to get better resources
• Combine better resources to make cool thing
• Pat myself on the back for making a cool thing

However, I don't much enjoy building game. Simcity is fun because I can optimize placement for efficient function. Minecraft is not fun because I don't like laying bricks. Terraria was a great combination of action, crafting, and exploration. Some people enjoyed the building aspect, but I chose to minimize that part, making basic houses out of dirt.

Starbound seems to have everything I liked about Terraria with even less focus on building. 

Not Fun

After a few hours of playing Starbound, I gave up. I just wasn't having fun. There wasn't a clear progression for crafting. There were more caves and less mining. 

Inventory Management

A big problem I have with this sort of game is the clunky inventory management. Let's say I'm hungry (a feature of the game I don't enjoy). This is how I feed myself:

• I open my inventory with the I key. Why do I have to reach all the way over to I in a WASD+mouse game? Maybe they could combine the crafting and inventory windows so that they are both accessed with the same command C.
• Now I have a big opaque window in the middle of my screen. I have to drag the window to some other less inconvenient location. Fortunately the game remembers that location until I quit. How about saving the location for the next time I load up? Or find a way to display my inventory without blocking off 20% of the screen? Perhaps there could be a widget permanently docked on the side of the screen to show whatever it is I need to interact with.
• With my inventory open, I need to find food. There is a convenient Food tab to click. The button is small. Now I have an unsorted list of all food, raw food, ingredients, seeds, and other various semi-edible things. I mouse hover them until finding something that seems good to eat. Couldn't this be auto-sorted? Like by calories or something?
• This part bothers me the most. Now that I have identified my Delicious Meal, I have to move the meal to my action bar. I can't just click and eat, I have to make the food available.
• With my food on the action bar and so close to my mouth, I now must select that action. Basically I need to wield my Delicious Meal. 
• Finally, with food in hand, I can left or right click to stave off starvation for a few more minutes.

Instead of that cumbersome exercise, I propose the following user experience to consume food:

• Auto eat when hungry. 

Early Access

I feel the need to plug my opinion of Early Access. Don't do it. Maybe if you want to participate in the development of the game, fine. But don't buy Early Access because you are exited to play a game. It always ends badly. Instead go find one of the thousands of completed games to buy. Many of them are on sale right now.