Fair enough! I put the cdkey information out there for those that can’t afford the full $15 price tag. It’s been a hard year for a lot of people, so I always try to be sensitive to that. I think I paid $10 back in the beta myself.

I just wrote some detail on this into another reply here, but suffice it to say that the game with mods these days is nothing like the original game.

Out of the hundreds of games I’ve played, I’ve never seen a community put so much effort into modding a game. It’s turned a game that held my groups attention for 2-3 weeks into a half a year endeavor.

Oh, and the game is only $5-6 if you get a cd key! Be careful when using these services, but I’ve yet to be ripped off after buying dozens of games this way.

https://www.allkeyshop.com/blog/en-us/buy-starbound-cd-key-compare-prices/
(this is an aggregate, I have used Kinguin with success which is on this list at $6 right now.)

I’ll tell you, the original game is just okay. It’s kind of fun, but it never really drew me in… The big wildcard here is the mod scene. Mods like Frackin’ Universe (which we are running) turn a game that holds most people’s attention for a few hours into a game that’s highly addictive, which tends to span for months on end.

Our last season was expected to run for a few weeks (that’s how long we lasted with the non-modded server). Instead, it ran something like 4-5 months. And most of us put hundreds of hours into it.

So, if you check it out, be sure to check out mods like Frackin’ Universe along with the core game. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that Frackin alone adds many times more content than the original game serves up.

It’s the perfect game for Lemmy in that respect. It’s all about free contributions (mods) from the community. They basically saw potential in a base game, and decided to create hundreds of hours of content for the entire community to enjoy. Very inspiring stuff in a somewhat darkening time in human history.

Hopefully this doesn’t count as excessive self-promotion. This is actually largely a very single-player oriented game, and as such we don’t need additional players to enjoy it by any means… this said, I thought it would be really neat to connect with other Lemmy folks and bond over Starbound!

Our group primarily uses Discord to communicate (I know, it’s a terrible platform, but it’s really hard to replace when you’re trying to keep gamers connected to one another). It’s a very active discord - we chat every single day with one another in it. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve advertised a new server, what with the country and the world being so chaotic and negative lately… but I believe distractions like Starbound can be really important!

I hope a few folks check us out. It’s a great group of people, and we enjoy some really fun games together on a regular basis.