Starbound

 

 

Around 1,600 hours played

Price: $15 

Price per current hours played: $0.01

 

I'm sure many reading this will have, at the very least, heard of Starbound. Many, I'm sure have played it. Simply put, it's Minecraft meets Metroid, a 2D platformer, survival, RPG, simulator... yes... all of them. 

You start out a castaway on an alien planet. You need food, shelter, tools, and weapons. Pretty basic. Now, to upgrade all these things, you need resources, and some of these resources aren't on the planet you're on. That spaceship of yours needs repair, but it will soon be transporting you and your allies to the far reaches of the known universe. You'll travel to distant planets, battle all sorts of uglies, and collect the rarest of resources to build your ultimate weapons, armor, and tools.

Each planet has a number of random biomes, and there are multiple star types, which effect those biomes. Some stars make planets too cold to explore, too hot, or too... irradiated... You're going to need to find a way around that... You're going to have plenty to do on these planets, like mining, fighting, and searching for civilization both current, and long forgotten. If you can't seem to find one you like, you can just build one. If you build it, they will come.

Like Minecraft, one of the best things about Starbound is the ability to mod it. There's tons of mods, the most universally known being Frakin Universe, a mod that adds all sorts of new tech, planet types, and biomes to work with. You can follow different paths every time you play, giving you an endless amount of new stuff to do, from brewing up booze, to bee keeping, or crafting swords out of slime... not sure how that works...

At $15, this is another game that's value far exceeds it's price. Seriously, paying full price for this game is pretty much ripping off the creator. I don't know what these people were thinking.