I'd imagined an open-world 2D game similar to a "Fallout" or "Elder Scrolls" done on a low budget. This isn't perfect but I still recommend it. Graphics: Decent pixel art with little animation. Music: freeware, and after a while I found how to shut off battle music since there's only one tune for it and it interrupts the nice backgrounds often. Difficulty: Hard by default, tricky even on "Relaxed" mode, but auto-saves most stuff often. Gameplay: Mixes combat and exploration. Combat is interesting once you get into having powers for AOE, movement, stuns, etc. These let you do tricky dodges and traps, more rewarding than just banging into enemies till someone dies. Day/night cycle and tall grass make visibility important in battle. Exploration seems like an open world and has many secrets, but is held back somewhat by a sharp difficulty curve by area and a very linear main quest with no substantial factions' storylines. There's also an item customization system if you're into that, though I didn't use it much and collected tons of overrated "epic" items. Story: A bit disappointing. "We can't help you; go talk to the next guys." I'll just say the endgame didn't feel adequately set up or explained or resolved either. Eh; I had fun anyway. Bugs: A few random crashes when changing areas, at least one status effect (grabby roots) that has a missing description, and right after beating the final boss copies of its corpse kept appearing randomly in other places. No serious trouble. Overall: Worth playing!
I may come to like this more, and I do like the music and graphics and general charm of it so far, but... There are a number of obvious, sloppy bugs that I've noticed already on day 2 of the game's release. I created a "Sage Sorcerer" and had an ability with a blank description and name. I rested and saw text something like "{color=1}Abilities restored" on the camp's confusing timeline interface. My quest list offers to "Show complite quest". Basic quest info like "Where is this trading post I'm supposed to go to; which direction?" is missing. So far these bugs are minor, but two of them are things that any player could notice, and I suspect there are many other problems if I'm seeing these in my first hour or so of play. The game should not have been released in this condition. I'd give this game a positive review so far if it had been better playtested and patched before selling it, instead of using the customers as the playtesters.
It's helpful to judge indie games by the thought, "Would I be satisfied if the developers ran off after releasing what's out now?" Not that I think the Hinterland devs will, but what you get right now if you buy this is (1) a memorable, unusual survival/crafting sandbox game, and (2) the first two episodes of a somewhat interesting story mode. The sandbox mode stands out for not having any zombies or the like; the enemy is just that you're alone in a dangerous natural environment. I enjoyed playing Skyrim with a hypothermia mod, and this game takes that to another level by making you think about the deadly tradeoffs involved in day to day survival. Do you want to chop that log, burning calories and getting colder, to get firewood that you can use to get warm, boil drinking water and cook meat? When do you want to use up cloth to repair your clothes? The game is full of tough decisions that can lead to surprisingly nerve-wracking situations, like being in whiteout conditions and in danger of dying in a place that should be within sight of a shelter. The default difficulty level is pretty brutal on new players, so you might want to try the relatively easy mode first. Or do Interloper just to learn the controls and see how many minutes you last! As for the story mode, it keeps the basic survival mechanics and adds a more controlled experience where you're limited to certain areas but they're a little different and there are some specific quests to do and NPCs to talk with. If you care about voice acting: David Hayter and both Mass Effect stars are in this. ("Saved the galaxy; died in Canada.")
There are fans raving about "Starbound", but they're really fans of the hypothetical game that early-access buyers were promised years ago. What's really there is some basic gameplay that's less interesting than "Terraria", and features suggesting that maybe, one day, there might be a story and planets that aren't random, boring, and effectively identical. The devs posted last year that the game is "basically done" except that people are holding them to an especially high standard. Example: early on we saw a story intro for one of the races. It's still not in the game. In fact the story's still barely there for any race, and nothing you do (prison raids, attacking evil ape bases, &c) has any effect on the overall setting. The "frequent status updates" have generally been posts like "Look, we made custom pet collars!" (Check out their site to see for yourself.) To be fair, they've been hinting at future story missions in the last few days, but this is after years where the devs went from "near-daily content updates" to "frequent updates to an Unstable branch" to "rare Unstable updates, frequent 'Daily' updates." The two "big" "overhaul" features in the last year are a slight change to combat, and being able to create basic settlements that summon NPCs. It's something, yeah, but you're still paying for an incomplete and not terribly interesting game. Try "Terraria" instead.
