Starbound Winter Update Offers a New, Playable Race

Independent games are what keeps this industry running. While they may not have the huge sums of cash thrown around that larger, triple-A titles do, they offer a very diverse palate of innovation. Among these games is Chucklefish LTD's Starbound, which gifts players the opportunity of exploring an extraterrestrial universe, rich with backstory and interesting characters. If that doesn't sound exciting enough, then maybe you're just reading the wrong piece of news this morning.

A new update is available for the game, one that features a new, playable race. We've provided a partial list of the new additions to the game, taken from the game's latest trailer:

• New race – Novakids
• Hundreds of new items
• S.A.I.L. – Personal artificial intelligence for your ship
• New matter manipulator upgrades
• New ship upgrades
• New technology system, allowing you to choose an ideal equipment combination
• New biomes to explore
• Improved planet navigation
• Warp gates
• The Outpost – A new location offering quests and more
• Huge Cooking update
• Scriptable user interface windows

All of this comes packaged with a complete combat overhaul. It all looks pretty epic, so you'll definitely want to check it out in the trailer below. Keep an eye out for the Link look-alike about 53 seconds in. Maybe the resemblance is all in my head, but the trailer looks like its paying homage to Windwaker to me.

Starbound will be available on the Playstation 4, Playstation 3 and PSVita sometime in 2015. This will more than likely be in late 2015, given that the release dates are still listed as 'To be announced.'