Starbound

Starbound is Chucklefish's 2D side-on space sandbox, originally released into early access in 2013 and fully launched in 2016 with one of the most generously stocked toolkits the genre offered at the time. You've fled your home, you're lost in space with a damaged ship, and your only option is to beam down to the planet below to gather resources, repair your craft, and begin a journey across a procedurally generated universe with no fixed direction.

The game's most distinctive design choice is that it doesn't insist on any particular play style. You can pursue the main story campaign, saving the universe from the forces that destroyed your home while uncovering galactic-scale mysteries; or you can ignore the heroic path entirely in favour of colonising uncharted planets, settling down to farm, becoming an intergalactic landlord, hopping planet to planet to capture rare creatures, or delving into dangerous dungeons for treasure. Seven playable races each carry their own cultural design and starting story beats.

The construction layer is enormous. Hundreds of materials and over two thousand objects let you build anything from a cabin in the woods to a medieval castle, an underwater arcade or a working space station. Your starship can be decorated, expanded and customised across the campaign, with colonised planets producing settlers who pay rent in gifts and occasionally ask to join your crew. Three game modes — Casual (no food management), Survival (eat-to-survive, drop items on death) and Hardcore (permadeath) — and full modding support with Steam Workshop integration give the universe enough flexibility to be anything its players want it to be.