Many gameplay elements and features, such as items, enemies, and planets, use procedural generation in order to provide a variety of content. Players can navigate, explore and mine procedurally-generated terrain (left) to gather resources and create settlements, including constructing houses and leasing rooms to NPC tenants and villagers (right). The interior of the ship is also fully customizable, with items and blocks able to be freely placed within the ship.Įxploration and settlement gameplay in Starbound. The space shuttle acts as the player's vehicle while exploring the galaxy, containing a teleport pad the player can use to teleport down to the planets the shuttle is visiting, a ship locker for storing items, a fuel panel for refueling the ship and a cockpit for piloting the ship.

Starbound contains both quests and story driven missions, buried inside its vast sandbox universe. The space shuttle orbits a habitable planet and an adventure begins that takes the player hurtling across the universe. With nothing to guide it, the shuttle shoots into space without direction, becoming lost in a sea of stars. Starbound begins with the player inside a spacecraft after the destruction of Earth, home of an intergalactic peacekeeping organization known as the Terrene Protectorate, while just having graduated from its ranks.