After nearly a year since its last major update, the last one being Enraged Koala, the sandbox 2D side-scroller Starbound has finally collected all its past "nightly" builds into one large public update which is now live for all to play.

Titled Upbeat Giraffe, the new (mostly) stable build features a stack of changes that developer Chucklefish have been implementing over the course of these nightly builds. For those who haven't played since the Enraged Koala update, it's almost like a new game.

One key feature is the new tutorial to help those like myself who haven't played in awhile, hosted by your ship's A.I. A new race has also been added, the Novakids, and all ships now represent their race with unique upgrade paths. So yes, you can finally upgrade your ship's size, space and also add additional bonuses.

Another of the big updates - though one you won't be seeing just yet - is the Hub, a galactic marketplace for all manner of creatures to buy, sell and trade items of varying types. You'll also be able to pick up quests in this new hub, and upgrade your ship. New special missions are also available to players, which will extend into dungeon spelunking with unique monsters and loot to that dungeon.

So if you haven't fired up Starbound for some time it is probably suggested to give it a look over thanks to this new update. All the features can be found directly through the website, but Chucklefish has also released a trailer below celebrating the changes in visual form for those so inclined.

Chucklefish's 2D space exploration sandbox title Starbound has been updated with a new patch, this time adding in themed Valentine's Day items to help show your love to those planetary aliens. These include new swords, costumes, decorations and a bow among others for players to discover.

The update isn't all content though, with some changes to how the sandbox's update system works in allowing Chucklefish the ability to add new biomes and make changes to worlds without the possibility of the player losing their world. The team does state that there will most likely be one more world wipe sometime in the future when they finalise the universe layout.

Additional changes include:

Engine feature, tech can now be granted by armors

Keybinding reconfiguration, minus the UI (you can reconfigure keys through a config file- check here for a tutorial)

Server stability fixes for servers with many players

New death animations

Engine feature, all objects are now scriptable and interactive

More Avian weaponry

Projectile changes

Dogs can now be captured (lots more pets coming soon)

A bunch of new items and smaller pieces of content

New (actually sounds good!) microphone instrument with sounds provided by Smooth McGroove!

Bug where warping to magma/volcano biomes caused crashing was fixed.

There will also be additional content coming shortly that includes new biomes, however the team need to wait until after this patch, as it needs to be adapted to the new content update system. For now you can check out the smooth moves of Smooth McGroove in action below.

Chucklefish's 2D space exploration sandbox title Starbound has been updated with the first of what will most likely be many updates in the new year, adding in the long awaited "final character wipe" that was previously teased.

In addition to "massive changes to disk serialization" that will help with nullifying character wipes, the patch also adds more efficient mod distribution, as well as new biomes, monster attacks, tech, and an enforced PvP zone in the X Sector. Here's a small snippet of what you may (or may not) find on your space pirate adventures:

Added difficulty levels and permadeath characters to the game.

All player drops are persistent now. So if you accidentally throw your diamond drill down a mineshaft, you don’t have to suicide trying to get it back before it disappears.

New Monster attacks (gravity slam! gust attacks! other stuff!)

Fixed Legendary Weapons damage (adjusted up to be more… well… Legendary.)

We’ve put in new Techs (such as a Glitch Mech).

New biome type enabled. Savannah.

Boss Lore!

No more eating bandages and stims, they have their own thing now.

You can find the new patch available now, dubbed Furious Koala, and the full patch notes over here.

Since our last update on Chucklefish's space exploration sandbox title Starbound the team has added a variety of new content into their game. From skyhooks to Pokemon-like pet training, the team were quite the busy folks ensuring their Early Access title wasn't keeping players waiting for new content as they move their way forward to an official release.

Today the team has revealed through the official website that the first major patch since getting back from the holidays will be arriving shortly, set to introduce new weapons, a new permadeath mode and of course more hats than your head can handle. In addition, there's a reassuringly big list of bug fixes to look forward to.

Alongside the bug fixing and new content, Chucklefish has also revealed that this update will be introducing "the highly anticipated/possibly feared final character wipe." This change will make it so players won't have to fear future patches potentially wiping their characters or ships. The blog update notes that this will "definitely be the last time we’ll need to wipe characters or ships, and will hopefully be the last time we’ll need to wipe worlds."

“The problem is that the organization of planets may change so if they go muck with a planet, how do we put it in the celestial map? Or if they build on a biome we remove, or something. So no promises, but we’ll try. But promises on the player / ship.”

The update is scheduled for sometime next week. Check out the full patch notes over here.

Indie developer Chucklefish Games has announced that their still in-development 2D sandbox space side-scroller Starbound has hit it big with Steam Early Access, scraping in at just over one million copies sold since going live on December 4th last year.

Currently Starbound is available through Steam's newest Early Access category, allowing those eager to put up with incomplete content and game-breaking bugs the chance to try their hand at helping developers fix the game as they progress through development cycles. With this newest information it seems there has been enough eager players to forgo the bugs in order to get their hands on the new game, which is always good to hear.

This isn't the first success that the dev team has experienced, previously running an early funding promotion. That proved to be highly successful and generated millions for the company even before the Steam early access launch.

Those eager to jump in on the action, and we do warn you that it is an Early Access title so do be prepared for bugs, can find the game available through their official website.

After being released early in the morning yesterday, indie developer Chucklefish Games has taken to Reddit to outline their very first update to 2D sci-fi sandbox title Starbound which will see a number of tweaks and bug fixes to the early access beta.

One of the more prominent changes players will see is that the pixel cost (in-game currency) for crafting some of the early weapons and armour on your workbench have been significantly reduced, some to the point of no cost at all. The change will hopefully help those struggling a bit to overcome the quite high initial cost when building your weapons or armour.

Other changes include new climbable ropes that you can craft, iron will now appear more often, reduction of fuel costs by a bit to visit other planets, the addition of a hunting knife weapon that compliments the hunting bow for meat gathering, tweaks to the UFO boss and of course a number of UI changes including making the warmth bar more obvious.

If all this sounds like your kind of style, you can check out the official website for more or find the game available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux at $15 or $44.99 for a four pack.