We are excited to share that from today onwards, you can jump into the stellar adventure Starbound with an Xbox Game Pass subscription. Starbound on Xbox also comes with full controller support and new features Xbox platforms!

Key Features for Xbox Players:

7 Playable Races: Choose and customize your character from a variety of intergalactic species.
Story Campaign: Dive into a campaign filled with unique characters, epic boss fights, dungeons, and quests.
Co-Op Multiplayer: Explore the stars with up to 4 friends in online drop-in co-op.
Endless Exploration: Customise your starship and explore a universe with procedurally generated planets, each filled with unique biomes, creatures, and treasures.
Colony Management: Establish a colony on uncharted planets, and interact with tenants who may even join your crew!
Game Modes: Casual, Survival, and Hardcore modes offer different challenges for every kind of player.
Crafting: Build and customize thousands of items—from furniture and weapons to armour and entire buildings.
Capture Monsters: Tame creatures to fight by your side or keep them in your own personal zoo.
Toggle auto-aim at any time – a new accessibility feature introduced for controllers

Plus, Starbound on Xbox comes with ALL the free content updates from the PC version!

Please note: Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox One and Xbox One X are able to host up to 4 players in a party, whereas Xbox One S players are able to host up to 2 players in a party.

Whether you’re venturing out solo or teaming up with friends, it’s time to explore the universe right from the comfort of the big telly! Stay updated with Starbound by following us on X, and be sure to check out Chucklefish on X, Instagram, and YouTube for the latest news and exciting upcoming games!

Xbox Players can enjoy a new update live now which includes some Quality of Life and bug fixes to improve playability on a controller and address some stability issues on console. This is our last Starbound update of the year. For now, we’re off to have a little rest, but we’ll be hurtling through space once again in 2025, we’ll see you then.

Minor Changes/Bug Fixes

1.4.5.2 Changelog

– Adjusted default button bindings (LB/RB is the only way to switch items now)

  – Long press LB/RB to display Radial/Manipulator interface.

  – Short press LB/RB to switch to previous/next item.

– Added in Setting that item switching order could switch between in-group or global switching.

  – For example, if the current held item is from the Radial group and is set to in-group cycling, short pressing LB/RB will only switch between Radial items, unable to switch to Manipulator.

  – If set to global cycling, short pressing LB/RB can switch to Manipulator.

– Further reduced the time to automatically return to locked state from 500ms to 100ms.

– Added ability to quickly switch between inventory and storage using LT and RT when opening the storage interface.

– Moved the quest progress tracking HUD from the lower right corner to the upper right corner of the screen.

– Added display of currently bound items in the quick bar to the game interface.

– Swapped the positions of brush and survey tool in the tool quick bar (long press RB).

– Fixed an issue where the chat window would persist for a period of time when first entering the game.

– Swapped the functions of the original X and Y buttons in the inventory, storage, and shop interfaces.

– Added button prompt text to the mech editing interface.

– Optimized cursor position when closing secondary menus in inventory, storage, and shop interfaces.

– Fixed an issue where the cursor orientation did not change when the player’s orientation changed.

– Moved the boss health bar position to the top of the screen (previously at the bottom).

– Fixed issues with some shop page shortcut buttons being ineffective or incorrect.

– Fixed the erroneous behavior when pressing the LS button in the inventory while the store interface is open.

– Fixed the game crash when player dies due to hunger value reaching 0 while opening the store interface.

– The LS and RS buttons’ function to control item quantity in the store interface is only effective when the focus is on the store interface rather than the inventory interface; corresponding button prompts will also be modified.

– Added View button shortcut to organize inventory.

– Fixed potential crashes caused by game rendering.

– Fixed the issue of offline status text in the upper right corner overlapping with quest tracking text.

!

Starting today, console players can dive into the vast, procedurally generated universe that PC players have been loving for years, now optimized with full controller support and new features for Xbox platforms.

Key Features for Xbox Players:

• 7 Playable Races: Choose and customize your character from a variety of intergalactic species.
• Story Campaign: Dive into a campaign filled with unique characters, epic boss fights, dungeons, and quests.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Explore the stars with up to 4 friends in online drop-in co-op.
• Endless Exploration: Customise your starship and explore a universe with procedurally generated planets, each filled with unique biomes, creatures, and treasures.
• Colony Management: Establish a colony on uncharted planets, and interact with tenants who may even join your crew!
• Game Modes: Casual, Survival, and Hardcore modes offer different challenges for every kind of player.
• Crafting: Build and customize thousands of items—from furniture and weapons to armour and entire buildings.
• Capture Monsters: Tame creatures to fight by your side or keep them in your own personal zoo.
• Toggle auto-aim at any time – a new accessibility feature introduced for controllers

Plus, Starbound on Xbox comes with ALL the free content updates from the PC version!

Please note: Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox One and Xbox One X are able to host up to 4 players in a party, whereas Xbox One S players are able to host up to 2 players in a party.

Ready to Jump In?

Starbound is now available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S at just £11.99 / $14.99 / €13.99.

Whether you’re playing solo or with friends, it’s time to explore the universe from the comfort of your console! Follow Starbound on X for updates, and don’t forget to check out Chucklefish on X, Instagram, and YouTube for more exciting news and upcoming titles!

Happy exploring!

The Starbound Xbox version is finally almost ready to launch!

Before we confirm the release date, we would love to involve the Starbound community to get your thoughts and feelings regarding usability – specifically around controls and console-specific design decisions on the Xbox version. This will inform our final changes ahead of the game’s launch, and will help us with any further quality of life changes for future post-launch patches.

For those of you with an Xbox One or Series console, Starbound will be available to playtest for a limited time as part of the Xbox Insider Program from Wednesday 28th August – Wednesday 4th September! 

The testing pool will be size restricted in order for us to manage and prioritize the feedback we receive, so please note that access is not guaranteed for all users.

Please note: Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox One and Xbox One X are able to host up to 4 players in a party, whereas Xbox One S players are able to host up to 2 players in a party.

What feedback are we looking for?

Our main aim of the playtest is to find the optimal default controller mapping for the launch version using information we receive from the playtest surveys. We want to find out what feels best and most natural for the majority of players, so after you’ve given the default controls a try, you can adjust the mapping and deadzone balancing in the Settings.

• How does the default button mapping feel? Did you make any customisation changes to the layout?
• How responsive do the current controls feel?
• How did the game balancing feel for the Xbox version? (We’ve made slight adjustments to the Xbox version!)
• Do you have any thoughts about the console UI?
• How was the performance and stability?
• Any other console-specific version feedback?

If you experience any bugs during your playtest please let us know via “Report a problem” so we can investigate:

• Hold down the home button on your Xbox controller
• Select Report a Problem
• Select the Games category and the ‘Starbound Demo’ subcategory
• Fill out the form with the appropriate information to help our investigation

How do I get access?

Any Xbox user can get access to the Xbox Insider Program via the Insider Hub app on the Xbox Store. Once you have installed the Insider Hub any Previews that you’re eligible for will be visible within the app. Please note that not all users will be eligible for all game betas (including Starbound), as some playtests are restricted by scale, platform, and other criteria. 

I’ve got thoughts! What should I do with them?

Firstly, thank you for getting involved in the playtest! It’s very hard to collate feedback across lots of social media platforms, so please share your thoughts in this Starbound beta Google Form! You can also access the survey directly from your Xbox console via the Insider Hub ‘Announcements’ section – select “Go” on the announcement to open an Edge browser with the survey linked. Feel free to discuss your thoughts with other players in the Chucklefish Discord or via the Starbound Reddit too.

Thank you all for your patience while we got to this point. It’s been a long road, but we’re glad to have you with us for it!

Chucklefish

Other Resources

• Get the Xbox Insider Hub app
• Xbox Insider FAQ
• How to provide feedback as an Xbox Insider

We’ve got some exciting news! Starbound will be releasing December 8th on Xbox Games Pass for PC!! This version is PC only, and identical to other PC versions with the new additions of Xbox achievements, and the ability to invite and join friends through your Xbox Live network.

This is a great chance to try Starbound if you’re an Xbox Games Pass subscriber – and we’re so pleased to have it join the great collection of titles available! It’s a fantastic value at only $9.99 a month and you’ll also gain access to over 100+ wonderful games (aside from our very own Wargroove, we also recommend checking out Carto, Ape Out and Frostpunk).

Last year we shared a number of updates about Starbound’s Xbox console version, which we’d been showing at public events and felt was nearly ready. Our last update was that the console version was suffering from serious performance issues with 3-4 players together in some scenarios and we felt it couldn’t be released to the public in that state. We’ve worked with a number of different developers to try and address this, and have made some progress – but we’re still not confident enough to say when it might be ready. We’ve seen all the requests for an update on console development, and we understand this isn’t the news everyone’s looking for – but we want to address it and reassure we are still working on it with our partners!

We’re also supporting Jingle Jam by Yogscast again this holiday season, where you can grab a bundle with Starbound and some other great titles to support charity! In the meantime, if you want to see what else we at Chucklefish are up to, you can follow us on Twitter here and chat to us in Discord here. Until next time, peacekeepers!

We’re excited to announce the release of Starbound 1.4 – the ‘Bounty Hunter’ update!

In this update players can become bounty hunters, seeking out criminal gangs through missions and climb the ranks as they rebuild the Peacekeepers and restore law and order to the universe. There’s also new elemental variants of many monsters, which have a rare chance to be encountered – if you see one be sure to capture it! In addition there’s a ton of new furniture, objects, weapons, and fun new stuff – including drones, password keypad locks, a laser mining tool, and a sports car!

We’ve been working on this update for a long time, thanks so much for being patient while we took the time to get it just right! Here’s an outline of all the changes;

Bounty Hunting

• New procedurally-generated quests that see the player travel to worlds and into space, hunting down criminal gangs
• New Peacekeeper stations for bounty hunters – work your way through promotions and restore law in the universe
• Take the fight to criminal gangs at their hideouts, including a climatic final mission & boss fight!
• New quests: Becoming a Peacekeeper, Rookie Assignment, Rising through the Ranks, The Good Fight, Keeping the Peace, Going after the Occasus
• New generated bounty quests
• New generated criminal hideout microdungeons

New Music

• Four new music tracks by Starbound composer Curtis Schweitzer

Rare Monsters

• Elemental Monster variants – they are capturable, and earn progress in a new collection.
• New Collection: Rare Pets collection
• New monster variants: Fire Gleap, Electric Voltip, Poison Smoglin, Ice Peblit, Albino Poptop, Electric Anglure, Fire Bobot, Poison Bulbop, Electric Capricoat, Ice Crabcano, Electric Crutter, Ice Fennix, Elecrtic Hemogoblin, Ice Hypnare, Fire Lilodon, Poison Mandraflora, Ice Miasmop, Ice Narfin, Fire Oogler, Poison Nutmidge, Ice Orbide, Electric Petricub, Poison Pipkin, Electric Quagmutt, Ice Ringram, Poison Scaveran, Elecrtic Snaunt, Poison Snuffish, Poison Sporgus, Fire Taroni, Fire Toumingo, Poison Trictus, Electric Yokat, Electric Ignome, Fire Lumoth, Poison Pyromantle, Electric Skimbus, Fire Spookit, Fire Squeem, Fire Wisper, Ice Agrobat, Poison Batong, Poison Bobfae, Fire Monopus, Poison Paratail, Fire Pteropod, Cultist Scandroid, Ice Crustoise, Ice Iguarmor, Fire Oculob, Poison Pulpin, Ice Snaggler, Electric Tintic, Fire Gosmet

New Furniture

• Egyptian set: Egyptian Bed, Egyptian Chair, Egyptian Crest, Egyptian Pillar, Egyptian Statuette, Egyptian Table
• Office set: Office Cabinet, Office Computer, Office Desk, Office Desk Lamp, Office Noticeboard, Office Scanner, Office Server, Office Stapler, Office Table
• Peacekeeper objects: Peacekeeper Chair, Peacekeeper Computer, Peacekeeper Desk, Peacekeeper Door, Peacekeeper Emblem, Peacekeeper Rusty Emblem, Peacekeeper Furnishings, Peacekeeper Lamp Post, Peacekeeper Mug, Peacekeeper Notes, Peacekeeper Painting, Peacekeeper Tall Poster, Peacekeeper Wide Poster, Peacekeeper Store, Peacekeeper Table, Peacekeeper Vending Machine, Peacekeeper Poster
• Neon objects: Bounty Board, Neon Hologram, Neon Lamp Post, Neon Magenta Light, Neon Peacekeeper Emblem, Neon Store, Neon Triangle
• Occasus pieces: Cultist Airlock Door, Cultist Airlock Hatch, Cultist Banner, Cultist Chest
• Other: Dark Computer, Extractor Drill, Hanging Guardian, Mech Platform
• New Teleporter: Peacekeeper Teleporter
• New Wireable Object: Numeric Keypad

Other New Additions

• Drones: Peacekeeper Drone, Mining Drone
• New Weapons: Neo Magnum, Neo Magnum-E78, Neo Magnum-RX, Neo Magnum-ZZZ, Glue Sprayer, Lazercaster, Stun Grenade
• New Tool: Mining Laser
• New Unique Monster: Cosmic Intruder
• New Mission: The Dantalion
• New Boss Encounter: The Swansong
• New Armor: Captain Noble Head, Cultist General Hood, Cultist General Tentacles, Groucho Glasses, Pharaoh Headdress, Sheep Hat, Shirt Top, Peacekeeper Set (Peacekeeper Hat, Peacekeeper Shirt, Peacekeeper Trousers)
• New Figurines: Cosmic Intruder Figurine, Swansong Figurine
• New Mech Parts: Neo Laser Mech Arm, Peacekeeper Mech Body
• New Augments: Peacekeeper I Augment, Peacekeeper II Augment, Peacekeeper III Augment
• New vehicle: Red Sports Car
• New world spawn vehicles: Dropship, Mini Tank, Mini UFO, Sportscar, Jeep
• New object tags: Cultist, Egyptian, Peacekeeper, Office
• New Tenants: Egyptian, Peacekeeper, Office
• New blocks: Sloped Glass Panel, Polygon Platform
• New currency: Peace Credit

Changes and fixes

• Changed the crafting requirements for all mech parts to match materials in the system where the blueprint is found.
• Changed name of ‘T-Rex’ fossil pieces to ‘T. Rex’
• Fixed bug where Triplod Figurine was not properly awarding credit to the Collections Library
• Various lua bindings added
• Added /setdungeonid command
• Updated instrument audio position to follow the player
• Display for gendered armor in tooltips
• Add hover state to mission/crew/tech interface lists
• For radial tile brushes, damage tile center instead of tile origin
• Allow equalsSelf material render rule to also match on hue
• Add a glow to inventory button when inventory has new items
• Add a cooldown to ouch noise
• Remove monster families and variantParameters
• Allow bursting particle emitters multiple times in the same frame
• Fix latch object animation bug
• Only suffocate if mouth position is inside collision geometry
• Fix energypickaxe animation state
• Fix projectiles not dealing damage if spawned after the parent projectile has died
• Minor bugfixes

We hope you all enjoy this update, please let us know what you think on Twitter or Discord! We’ll be streaming it later this afternoon on our Twitch channel if you’d like to see a preview!!

Till next time

A few years ago we’d announced we planned to bring Starbound to consoles, and dedicated a lot of our studio resources into re-designing the UI for consoles and optimizing the game resources to work on consoles – working closely with Blitworks, who did a fantastic job helping us with the porting.

Starbound was playable to the public at a number of Xbox events in 2018, and had very positive feedback – it played very well on Xbox One and we’d publically announced our intention to finish and release soon!

Late in development while evaluating the game we identified performance issues when playing with four or more players together, but still felt confident we could address them to have it release ready. We worked to optimize and redesign a number of systems specifically to optimize the performance in multiplayer, but ultimately after months of work it still wasn’t enough to get the game up to our standards. With four or more players together we’d still encounter some stuttering and frame drops.

We don’t want to limit the number of players or remove features to address the problem – that would mean releasing the game in a ‘less complete’ state and wasn’t a solution we were comfortable with.

So what’s the plan?
We’ve spent the past few months working with some new outside porting partners to try and further optimize the game performance. We’ve got some very experienced programmers who think it’s achievable and are working on it – but we don’t want to give any assurances until we’ve tested it. Outside that the game is ready, but it’s a make or break issue and we can’t introduce Starbound to consoles with current performance.

We’d hoped to have better news to share in this update – and we’re sorry we’d waited so long to deliver it. For right now a console version is delayed while we continue to work on technical solutions to optimize large groups in multiplayer, and we’ll keep supporting the PC version (1.4 is available to beta test right now on Steam).

This week we surprise dropped an unstable release of Starbound 1.4 – the ‘Bounty Hunter’ update!

Since we last wrote about 1.4 on the Dev Blog we took some time to revisit our content plans and how they worked within the main game, and now we’re at a point where we we’d like to invite players to see where we’ve got it!

The themes of the update are the same we’d originally shared! In Starbound 1.4 you’ll become a bounty hunter, taking on new quests to track down wanted criminal gangs, rise up through the Peacekeeper ranks and ultimately restore law and order in the universe! Additionally there’s lots of other content including new dungeons, monster variants, new items, furniture pieces and more to discover.

 
We’re looking to get some feedback from players, if you’d like to preview the update and share your thoughts with us the best place is the ‘beta feedback’ channel of the Starbound Discord. It’s still in development, so things now are not necessarily representative of the final implementation – and expect some bugs and incomplete content (and back up characters before playing).

We know it’s been a while in the making, so we’re excited to hear what players think! Here are the high level changes;

Bounty Hunting

• New procedurally-generated quests that see the player travel to worlds and into space, hunting down criminal gangs
• New Peacekeeper stations for bounty hunters – work your way through promotions and restore law in the universe
• Take the fight to criminal gangs at their hideouts, including a climatic final mission & boss fight!
• New Peacekeeper and gang related events that happen whilst you’re hunting bounties

More Changes

• New dungeon and micro-dungeons
• New elemental monster variants
• New items
• New furniture objects
• Minor bugfixes

 
We’ll be showing off more new content and have a more detailed changelog before release!

Hi everyone,

Starbound is launching on the new Discord store! As you might have seen from our last post, we’ve added some updates to the PC version for Discord integration. Those changes are going live to the stable version today on all platforms, we didn’t think it made sense to update Discord but leave the other branches a version behind.

We’re really excited about this new integration and the Discord store! Discord has quickly become a really great community space, and having Starbound available right inside the app and better integrated is something we are very excited about. We’ve got a number of active discord channels for our games, and we’ve setup a new one specifically for all things Chucklefish! It’s sometimes difficult for us to monitor all our servers, we’re hoping this will centralize things a bit and make it easier to interact with devs and have a place to ask questions about all our games!

Here’s a link to the Chucklefish Group server, feel free to pop in and say hello!

Lastly, we know it’s been some time since we published a Starbound PC version update – most of this year we’ve been focused on Xbox porting work. Our focus has shifted back to PC in the past few weeks and we’re planning to have an update ready very soon. We’ll share a post detailing more about that update shortly!

Till next time!

I’m Katy (aka Superconsole), a newish member of the Marketing & Community team here at Chucklefish. Some of you may have seen me lurking in the forums or posting over at the Wargroove Dev Blog, but this is my first Starbound entry!

Lately Healthire, Katzeus, SamuriFerret and Kyren have been working closely with the Discord team to integrate Starbound functionality into the app, making the game more accessible for players. Some of this stuff doesn’t sound too sexy, but in action it’s really cool!

The features include rich presence, which means that you’ll be able to see on Discord whether you’re in menu or in game, and also how many people you’re currently playing with. You’ll also be able to invite players to join your game directly through the Discord app, as well as asking to join other people’s games too.

You may have also heard that Starbound will also be one of the very first games available in the brand new Discord Store! This is super exciting for us, as it means Discord users will be able to purchase the game and immediately jump right in and start playing from the app, which is linked directly to Steam. The Store is still in closed beta right now, but here’s a sneaky peek:

All the Discord integration will form part of a v1.3.4 update, which is currently on an unstable branch, but you can jump in and give the features a whirl now, while we iron out everything for full launch on a stable branch. If you want to find other players to test out the game joining features, you can also join the community-run Starbound Discord server.

There’s a lot bubbling behind the scenes here, and we’re looking forward to sharing more news with you all about our bigger plans for Starbound 1.4, Xbox and beyond as soon as we can! In the meanwhile, we’re on the look out for a pixel artist and programmer to join the Starbound team here in London, so if this sounds like you, check out the Chucklefish blog for more details!

Until next time.