After all the doom and gloom of my latest post I decided to spend some time reading about Starbound, the upcoming successor to Terraria’s 2D sandbox adventure throne. I’m hesitant to even get excited–the game is likely a ways off–but Tiyuri, the lead developer, seems to have most of the game planned.

The game looks like it will play a lot like Terraria, with all the side-scrolling, zombie-smashing mayhem that made the first game great. If there was one thing I wished for Terraria, though, it was more and lots of it. That’s what Starbound looks set to deliver. Tiyuri is promising a massive number of items, multiple planets to explore, an ever-increasing difficulty system, and enough vanity items to keep the most dedicated Chinese farmers happy for at least a day or two.

Pop over to the game’s official dev site for more information. This is one game I’ll be adding to my hopeful future playlist. The moment a beta releases, you can bet I’ll be doing what it takes to get in.

Image from: Playstarbound.com

Screenshots popped up over the weekend showing off the newest project from Tiyuri, one of the developers of indie hit Terraria. The game looks to be a step either forward or backward from Terraria’s old-school graphical style, depending on your point of view. Tiyuri has been fairly transparent about the scope of the project so far, even though the game is still in the early stages of development.

“We plan for there to be a main quest inside the sandbox world. Depends how much time we have of course,” Tiyuri said on his Twitter account. For now, I’m tentatively excited. From the looks of the UI, the game appears to be inspired by some dungeon crawlers. Tiyuri is using the Diablo 3 method of control, binding skills to the left and right mouse buttons and offering hotbar slots as well.

If there’s one thing I would like to see updated from Terraria, it’s the inventory management system. While the game did offer some nice options for moving items in and out of chests, I was constantly amazed at just how quickly my inventory would fill and how much time it could take to find what I needed.

I’m also hoping these aren’t the final graphics. I’m not sure what it is, I just don’t like them. They lack the flair that made me love Terraria’s design.