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[Farce]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=326292483
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/planet-centauri-2d-procedural-sandbox-game--2

Totally-not-Starbound by some French guys.  Magic, SWORDSNSTUFF, guns, mechs, so has the same indecisive sorta setting - though it doesn't (yet) seem to have dumb shit like a poop-biome, so that's cool.

Neat stuff they're talking about including: making your own spells; rescuing villagers from the underground and making a village with them (said villagers seem to be plant-people); POKEYMANS; a 'programming system' or something to modify your pets behaviors.  Prettier background art than Starbound.  They also don't seem to be promising an infinite explorable world n' shit, so that's good.

They've got vids on both the above link.  Lots of really nice sprite art and a link to an OST on soundcloud.

Given Starbound, I'm pretty skeptical.  It also looks really polished, which is kinda anomalous of a thing on a crowdfunding site, though they say on Indiegogo that it's so they can keep working fulltime on it, due to having blown their savings on the project.  I guess that mmmight explain their Indiegogo goal being only 8,000k Euros, though that still seems really low, especially if it's a 6-person team.

TL;DR, looks cool, hope it's not bullshit.

[Retropunch]

Urgh not another one...

[nyulzsiraf]

Totally-not-Starbound

it looks like just another terraria clone

[ejseto]

11 000€ : New Game +
14 000€ : The tower of the 100 challenges.
25 000€ : port of the game on PS4/XBOX ONE
30 000€ : port of the game on VITA

What's with those crap stretch goals? They want people to pledge more money so the devs can port the game to... make more money? And new game+ really? In a sandbox? I realize the goal is low, but they're really not offering much incentive to raise more.

[Virtz]

I wish the combat wasn't so basic in all these Terraria-likes. Put in locational damage, some blood and gore, give the fighting some umpf and interesting mechanics rather than just HP drainage. It's what the player will be doing most of the damn game, so make it satisfying.

[cerapa]

What's with those crap stretch goals? They want people to pledge more money so the devs can port the game to... make more money?

Decent ports aren't an easy thing to make.

[Sharp]

What's with those crap stretch goals? They want people to pledge more money so the devs can port the game to... make more money?

Decent ports aren't an easy thing to make.

If your going to back the project then it's assumed your going to already have the platform it's going to be released on, there isn't much incentive for backers to pay more so the game may be released on another platform. Ports are in no way cheap at all especially for Xbox One and PS4 and 10000 euros isn't even going to come close to covering the cost to porting in submitting to M$ and $ony let alone development and testing so maybe it's a way of seeing how many people are willing to pay for it but it's still stupid.

I hate stretch goals though, it's either features that should be in the base game anyway or pointless shit which is way overpriced and eitherway it just makes delivery time of the project increase. Star Citizen had stretch after stretch and isn't close to being released at all and is due November (from KS) , Elite Dangerous has no stretch goals and is quite close to release although it is still past it's due date which was March (from KS). Elite Dangerous likely to come out this year, Star Citizen probably this time next year if your lucky although will still probably be missing stretch goal features.

Anyway ramble aside this game does just look like another Terraria-like and I don't see the point really, between Terraria and Starbound is there any point really of what the game can offer. And I totally agree with Virtz that the combat is just really bad. Maybe they should make a 2D game on the other plane so it's top down because combat in these games really don't make use of the vertical that much.

[Graknorke]

0/10 _{^{did not pay me any shekels}} nothing at all do with SMAC, would not recommend.

[Sergarr]

I wish the combat wasn't so basic in all these Terraria-likes. Put in locational damage, some blood and gore, give the fighting some umpf and interesting mechanics rather than just HP drainage. It's what the player will be doing most of the damn game, so make it satisfying.

Blame Notch and his primitive Minecraft combat mechanics. All other guys are just following the leader...

[Ozyton]

I like these kinds of games... in theory. For some reason I could never really get into Terraria or Starbound.

I wish the combat wasn't so basic in all these Terraria-likes. Put in locational damage, some blood and gore, give the fighting some umpf and interesting mechanics rather than just HP drainage. It's what the player will be doing most of the damn game, so make it satisfying.

Hmm, yeah, I kinda feel like this might be where these kinds of games are lacking too. As someone who likes melee combat in games I feel almost as if the combat should be more "Prince of Persia" and less "Mario with grappling hooks and laser beams". I've also not been the most creative person so building unique structures and such wasn't something that interests me, my artistic ability is next to zero. The combat (if it were fun) and exploration draw me to these games more than anything, I remember the first time I found some underground tomb in Starbound, which I thought was pretty cool.. until I found out nearly every planet had something like that.

I also wonder how come these games are stuck with pixel art? I feel they should be more vector art, or would that be too resource intensive? I also imagine these games could have more depth, as in Little BIG Planet, where there's multiple "Z levels". Even if they just had doors leading into 'rooms', similar to A Valley without Wind maybe?

Well, in any case I'll be (im)patiently waiting for the "best" iteration of a Terraria-like so I can have fun with that.

[Levi]

Looked kinda nice to me.  The animations and platforming look a lot nicer than what I've seen in starbound or terraria, and the backgrounds are pretty nice looking. 

[Sergarr]

I also wonder how come these games are stuck with pixel art?

Because Minecraft's graphics was pixelized. Duh.

It's the only reason why we see "8-bit" in modern "indie" sphere. Following the leader, etc.

[Frumple]

... no? It isn't. At all?

Pixel work tends to be pretty clear, when it's done well. Easy to tell what X or Y is. It's certainly a hell of a lot easier to make not-look-like-complete-ass than basically anything else. It's also relatively low barrier of skill and trends toward lower resource drain. "Following the leader" is just... wrong. People were preferring pixel over other styles for 2D games before Infiniminer even existed for Minecraft to rip off.

And beyond ease of creation and resource impact, it comes with a built in market that mostly grew up with the stuff and is appreciative of the aesthetic. Gods know I'd rather see someone do crisp sprite work than fuck up 3D or vector or whatever again. I was there for the playstation and initial attempts at being pretty. They failed. They failed goddamn hard. People have been continuing to fail hard more often than not since. There's a reason AAA stuff has freaking ridiculous graphics-related budgets -- you basically need it to make a lot of graphical styles work worth a damn. Or at least freaking genius art creators willing to work for pennies.

So no, it's not mimicry. It's "most everything else is more difficult to make" plus "also considerably more difficult to make look good". Of course a small studio is going to have strong reason to stick to something that can still look damn good while avoiding those two problems.

[Neonivek]

I wish the combat wasn't so basic in all these Terraria-likes. Put in locational damage, some blood and gore, give the fighting some umpf and interesting mechanics rather than just HP drainage. It's what the player will be doing most of the damn game, so make it satisfying.

Yeah I agree. When combat in Zelda 2 is far more advanced then the combat in your game... you might need to touch it up.

[a1s]

Because Minecraft's graphics was pixelized. Duh.

It's the only reason why we see "8-bit" in modern "indie" sphere. Following the leader, etc.

So much wrong with this, I have to suspect you of being sarcastic.
Minecraft is not "pixelized" it's made of voxels, which is a whole different, "lego-ish", aesthetic. (one which I, incidentally, dislike but judging by the 2 billion price tag I'm in the minority)
compare and contrast
the pixelated look of indie games comes from the "8-bit" look, which (surprise!) come from the "8-bit" era which the developers grew up in.
And even that isn't the only reason we see pixelated 2d graphics. As anyone whose ever hanged around in game dev circles around the early 2000s knows, sprite animation is the simplest one there is, prevented from being the "bottom tier" only by the existence of "perpetual placeholder" graphics. (It's amazing just how "uncool" the style was back then compared to now)