"We’ll share a post detailing more about that update shortly!"

I don't understand what kind of things that make the dev so silent. It is not like there is something that make them super busy until they can't communicate to their fans and players, right? Sometimes I just wish they're more communicative.

 

I think it's all about priorities and communication regarding Starbound, and perhaps even the game itself, is no longer a priority.

You know what, I think I'm done. Move on to other games rather than being constantly disappointed. Maybe check back in a year or two.

 

No christmas blog post, no new year blog post, heck, we're now half a month into the new year and not a peep on the official blog.
I wonder if this is why Molly left. The community manager seems to have absolutely nothing to do, since they basically outright don't communicate with the community anymore.
This makes me increasingly alarmed for their upcoming games. Witchbrooke or Spellbound or whatever they were going to call it. The Harry Potter / Little Witch Academia mashup Stardew Valley knockoff.
And that other one, the Advanced Wars like one or whatever.
...Now that I think of it, all of their games look like suspiciously similar but in the end, inferior versions of other games.
Starbound to Terraria (let's face it, Terraria 1.3 is incredibly more feature-complete than Starbound 1.3, and unlike Starbound, it is still getting frequent teasers for new, massive updates) - Fair I guess since Tiy was part of ReLogic at one point.
Whatever Witch Game Thing to Stardew Valley (especially egregious since CF published Stardew Valley but didn't develop it)
And the strategy game thing which honestly looks like Just Another Strategy Game like so many before it, so completely uninspired that I can't even vaguely recall its name or any details.

It's sad, really. I feel like if they had stayed focused on Starbound, on bringing it to the full potential they had envisioned from the start, rather than constantly reimagining perfectly functional mechanics, lore, nearly-complete ideas, etc. every second update then rushing to a lackluster release after years of unsteady Beta, they'd have so much more community good will, and certainly a much better idea of how to develop a game. They would have been able to take things slow in a good way, focusing on what needed focus, taking feedback from the community, etc. Instead they just haphazardly threw things at the wall, new features here and there, replace this feature, remove that one, remake that one for the nth time, scrap that thing that ages were spent on, scrap that thing the community was looking forward to for years, put in this placeholder thing which is better than what we have planned for it later, etc. An endless cycle of random sputterings rather than guided development, with random slows and rushes, promises unfulfilled, and countless hours of time wasted on things that were entirely scrapped or replaced. It gives me absolutely zero confidence for their new projects, since it feels like they only lost more and more sight on the concept of the game they were trying to make as time went on, and now they legitimately don't know what to do with it.

 

Starbound isnt similar to Interstellaria?

 

On the core, the two games are quite similar. 2d, retro-graphics, action combat/mining/building voxel games made by relatively small teams. I don't know what Interstellaria is, but I assume you meant Terraria.
I know that comparing the two is a sore point in the community, but looking at just the basics, they do have enough similarities to warrant developmental comparison.

What I meant there, primarily, is that while Terraria has stayed focused on adding content to flesh out the game better, Starbound has floundered and flopped and just sort of reworked things constantly and made a mess of their own game time and time again. Terraria has gone above and beyond with continuing to update even after stating an update will be the last multiple times, and continues to make massive strides with content getting more and more ambitious, pushing their engine to its limits in a good way, while keeping players updated with teasers. Starbound, on the other hand, is still an unoptimized, buggy, resource-hogging ... thing, even this many updates later.
The game still feels incomplete and unsatisfying to a great many, including those who were originally very excited for it. Despite all the constant reworks, nothing feels like it fits together right, everything about it still feels off, and it feels like it's missing important parts, and the devs go silent for huge chunks of time with absolutely nothing to show for it, seemingly having just taken the money and put it into other projects, almost abandoning the one that made them that money in the first place, leaving promises unfulfilled, the game in a poor state, and their community declining rapidly and in shambles.

 

https://interstellaria.gamepedia.com/Interstellaria_Wiki

 

I think we thing alike. It is just I am already tired complaining and protesting about the games, the situation, and their behavior. I am just going to chill myself out, hoping nothing bad happen to those games or the company.

 

gotta agree with everyone here. i remember when the gaps between blog updates werent literally months long. its just all sad to see. wouldnt be too surprised if it turned out they just quietly abandoned the game tbh

 

Being an animator and having worked in both game development and tv, I have several theories about the troubled develpment of Starbound; however I think the most likely scenario is that sales on starbound have stagnated over the years, leaving Chucklefish to change into a publishing role instead of a development role. Just compare their list of published titles to their own! They have Starbound and yet to be released Wargroove. Just the two. But their list of publisher titles is five times that.

 

Three actually; Witchbrooke (or whatever the heck it was going to be called) too.
That said, publishing is far less intensive than developing, so the number discrepency is understandable.
It's like Bethesda, for example. Published many games, made some, but not nearly as many (especially solo).
Or Valve. Look at the money they rake in from Steam without developing a single thing.
Unlike Valve, at least Chucklefish is still trying. Who knows if things will improve though. If Starbound's current state of affairs is any indication, I'm skeptical at best.

 

Funny how Warsong err Wargroove is coming out tomorrow yet Starbound is still mia.. hmm..

 

Even better, they just launched a new website, chucklefish.org, which shunts Starbound down into the corner with their published-but-not-developed games.
I guess "playstarbound.com" didn't really fit anymore given that they've all but thrown the game out.

If they don't have some kind of post here after Wargroove releases, then I think I may just stop hoping and finally give up on them caring about this game at all anymore. It's been nearly 1/3 of a year with not a single word.

Edit: Oh. Well. Okay there goes most of my hope.
Apparently some nebulous time during or after the scrapped development of 1.4, Metadept left Chucklefish with 0 fanfare or acknowledgement here. He was the main guy behind scripting a lot of the game's core features, updating the API, etc, and the bounty hunting system that was scrapped.
First Molly, now Metadept. Community Manager and one of the primary Programmers. The latter of which just got up and left sometime in early to mid 2018 with nary a word.

Kyren, another lead programmer, hasn't been seen since 2016 and has no Twitter anymore.
That leaves Healthire and Tom (and Tiy?) as the only active coders.
As for artists... GeorgeV has left Starbound development since 1.0... SamuraiFerret and Supernorn are listed as active.
Neco says she's "working on Wargroove, worked on Starbound" ... notice worked, in past-tense.
Lili, who was another artist working on Starbound, only has Wargroove and Witchbrooke listed on her twitter, not even mentioning her involvement in Starbound on her bio. Abi seems to be MIA since October, at least on Twitter.
Armagon, the "Gameplay Design, Sound & Dungeon Guy", is also MIA since around 2018, his Twitter and personal Blog website have ceased to exist, and his Youtube hasn't been active since 2 years ago.
Mollygos, of course, left some time ago for unspecified reasons.
Hari, the project coordinator, on her twitter lists "Working on Witchbrook and Wargroove!" with no mention of Starbound... Noticing a recurring theme here. Rosiedeux, another programmer, does list Starbound along with Wargroove and Witchbrooke, however her twitter has been inactive since November. Donna the business manager does also list Starbound as a project she's been involved with but is, as with everyone else, entirely focused on Wargroove in the last months. Bartwe of course left years ago to work on Staxel.

It would appear that some have left Chucklefish at one point or another, others are trying to downplay Starbound, and others still seem to be trying to forget about it altogether. I'd say it's looking well and truly dead at this point.

 

Once you lay out all the evidence neatly it makes the writing on the wall that much obvious, huh.

I'm giving up the last shreds of hope I didn't even know I had, and now I'm definitely more disappointed that they didn't even try to announce it and just left the players to pick up the context clues and piece it all together while they begged for anything in the forums/subreddit/whatever. The only thing I can wish for future players is to not fall under Chucklefish's scam of development cycles, and to be infinitely wary when the development team starts to quietly leave it.

Feels like they murdered their own game and left the players to find the body in a hidden ditch. Shame.

Although I do wonder if they would announce it if people got vocal enough, but seeing how they aren't around their own forum and how the official threads for the blogposts meanders away from the official topic to anything else and no one appears to railroad it back...

Well. It's been a ride. One that I definitely wouldn't have boarded if I knew it would've ended up like this. From a promising kickstarter to troubled development, to drama, to that hidden Goon Exclusive part of the forums that not even the mods knew about, to even more troubled development regarding console ports, to the original development team leaving quietly, to the various subreddit drama, to being shunted to work newer and shinier projects (that strangely look similar to other games).... Certainly nothing I could have expected.

Could've been worse. They could've deleted posts and threads about this sort of thing.

Oh, wait.

 

I mean, I'm still glad I did board this wild ride honestly. While the game itself has been a ride going from hype, to excitement, to increasing disappointment as 1.0 approached and undid everything I had grown to like... I still had a good time with the game in its earlier stages, and even, to some extent, in the current stages (although far less). It also led me to meeting one of my biggest groups of friends, and even led to me meeting my partner through said group.
But well, the game itself is... Eh.
Oh well, at least there's stuff like Planet Centauri, Skywanderers, Hytale, additional Terraria updates, perhaps even the rumored "Terraria 2"... Lots of games with similar mechanics, themes, etc. which all look very promising so far.


Edit: And almost as immediately as Wargroove launched, they updated this site to plaster an ad for it on the announcement/notice banner, meanwhile giving no blog updates, nor any devs responding to any of the active threads talking about the lack of news, nor any thread for that matter. Brilliant.