Starbound is a wonderful game bogged down by developers who can't strike a balance between storytelling and sandbox gameplay. Also, they can't balance gameplay and mechanics. (Personally, I'd just separate the two into different modes.)

And they've sent the game straight to development hell due to their penchant for endlessly adding items rather than focusing on the now confused core game. As I last recall, making steel was a matter of taking copper and oil, rather than iron+coal/Iron+Fire.

To get to the point, in spite of the nightly updates and updates on the blog, Starbound seems no closer to a release now, than it did back in 2012. In fact, it seems a bit further away. As far as I can tell, they've missed 4 release dates, so the bet is, any takers for five missed release dates?

I have been following this game blog for some time, along with Edge of Space. I hoped both would be successors to great Terraria.

Edge of Space is out, and they didn't feel the need to release on GOG, or GOG rejected it (no idea which).

I probably didn't follow close enough to know what you mean by "missed 4 release dates". Only information abour release I know is this, and even that doesn't promise any date, just what needs to be done before 1.0. I just hope the result will be closer to Terraria instead of Windforge. I don't mind if they release it year or two "late", it's not like I have shortage of other games to play.

I know they promised to release something in 2013, at least.

As for Edge of Space, it only has 17 votes on the community wishlist and I hadn't heard of t before.

Yeah, I used to be really excited for Starbound, until I saw that it was pretty apparent that it would be one of those games in perpetual beta. Meanwhile we already have games like Interstellaria, which already seems to do much of what Starbound promised (even though it has its fair share of problems).

Any more release dates missed, and this may end up being the Grimoire of space-based games.

anyone ask the devs when is the final release date?

I'll bet it will be realeased "when it's done".

Is Crawl looking better these days? That's another game I haven't heard much from.

They

1) missed every release window they've set for themselves over a three year period

2) never made DRM-free "stable" beta builds even though they promised to do so after the uproar over using Steam exclusively (which is something they dropped on people only after they were funded)

3) their latest post claims they're oh so close to 1.0, they just need to revamp weapons, quests, vehicles, monsters, add story and polish - it's hard to say if they're just dimwitted or is it perhaps some sort of parody of game development, complete with taking money from people starting three years ago.

Grimoire is an apt comparison, forever in the "three issues remaining" mode, except when it goes up or down at random, or when you say "only three patches" but those three cover the entirety of the game. In conclusion, never pre-order, and especially never pre-order from Chucklefish.

Yes, it looks better with each update. There has been plenty of info, if you simply looked at their home page or Steam page. Also note that the last update wasn't that long ago - the game is still going forward as it always has been.

edit: GOG just decided it was time to rewrite the definition of premature when they decided to put Crawl and Nekro on the coming soon list, that's all.

I'll predict no later than 2011.

...Wait a minute?

Premature is indeed correct. :b