Sci-Fi MMO 'Starbase' Now Available In Early Access

Voxel-based sandbox sci-fi MMO “Starbase” was recently released on Steam as an early access title, giving would-be players a shot at trying out the game ahead of its full release. Fans of space sims, engineering and manufacturing games like “Factorio” and “Space Engineers” can expect a similar deal with “Starbase” but with a few twists.

“Starbase” puts thousands of players in a single, ever-expanding, persistent universe that’s filled with procedurally-generated planets, destructible environments and factions created by other players. As a sandbox game, players are free to do whatever the game allows, from starting their private mining operations, establishing trade routes between player outposts, creating hulking space stations or terrorizing known space as vicious pirates.

At the heart of “Starbase” lies a robust game engine that blends voxel and vertex tech together to create a fully dynamic and customizable game environment. This translates into a building system that allows players to create all manners of structures and systems like skyscrapers or operational factories. The game also features an intuitive custom ship builder that makes designing spaceships easy.

This building system ties directly into the mining, manufacturing and combat aspects of the game. For example, players can build factories that house ore processors and similar machinery or create mobile asteroid mining platforms with onboard processors, mining lasers and more.

Combat also plays a big part in “Starbase.” Players can retrofit their ships with weapons or arm themselves with a variety of guns like assault rifles, shotguns, railguns and more.

Weaponry directly affects the game’s voxel system, causing dynamic and realistic damage simulations on points of impact. Lasers will cut through hulls, rockets will blast buildings apart and bullets will punch holes through walls.

All of these features rely on the interactions between the game’s community members. Players can go in alone or with a group of friends, starting from scratch until they can achieve efficient space travel. There are no NPCs in the game, which means almost every activity in the game is done by and between players.

“Starbase” has plenty more in store for players in its early access roadmap, and if developer Frozenbyte manages to deliver on all of its promises, this game could end up revolutionizing the sandbox MMO genre.