Starbound Time! - Monster Catching Adventure

gaming-stuff (64)in #gaming • 8 years ago (edited)

So I built myself this Pet Station crafting table that let me create 3 techs related to pet (duh), and this [Game] Time! series will be about my search for a monster to catch using a tech called Capture Pod in Starbound. A tech similar to Poké Ball that let me catch monsters and make them my friends (Yaay!).

When you see a feature of catching monsters by throwing a ball at them the first thing to pop up in your mind would be Pokémon, yes? But this feature in Starbound have so little similarity to that beloved franchise, but still, the urge to be the very best like no one ever was is so strong.

All these references make me think that it's good to express your love/interest in something else and put it in your game or other works. And it could be anything, not only interest in other game/series. For example, a white cat named Floki in Starbound is based on Chucklefish artist Donna Orlowski's real life pet.

Off I go with two of my trustworthy companions. Ash, the white-haired girl in yellow with her big gun, romantically frustated and cheerful person, and Ironwire, the glitch in red that I thought was a he when she first joined my crew, until I gave my crews uniform. She's an outlaw ready to face anything and sometimes so random.

That's a nice little touch that this game has, NPCs has different personalities that affect how they behave, their activity, their sleep hour, and their dialogue. Although the dialogue are not so vast, it's still fun to have this little detail. This is something I wish the developer work on a little bit more.

The personalities are not clearly written for the player to notice, you must find out yourself what kind of person the NPC is. What I have in mind is to add more interaction like as simple as relationship system, the ability to give them gift that will increase the NPC's either positive or negative affinity towards the player.

Anyway, where were we? Monster!

On my search for a cute monster to catch, these group of monsters ambushed me in the middle of the night at the perfect spot, under in between two steep cliffs. None of them I catched with the Capture Pod and I hack them down with my favourite fabulous blade that have the ability to tear the space.

On the screenshot above, the one on the right that come out of the dark have the ability to spew bloods that deals damage, while the other two doesn't have unique ability like that, despite the different and unique looks that makes you think they have. They just charge towards me to deal damage.

Out of food, and exhausted from battling monsters (I was kind of tired of playing, really) and no cute monster to be seen yet. Angry blood spewing bird monster? Yeah that's cute, but not my kind of cute. I didn't warp back to my ship and decided to press forward until I stumbled upon an Apex village.

^{When your jam starts playing you get so excited
your head bust through the ceiling}

As you can see in the screenshot above, Ironwire is not there, but she didn't die too. So I guess she was... glitched. Get it?

I tried asking around the people there, maybe there's a side quest that require me to deal with Poptop, the monster I'm looking for. But no one seems to be in need for it. So me and Ash continued our search after I was done with my party.

^{Pfft! I screwed up there. Sorry, Ash.}

And finally! A few moments later I found the monster I'm looking for. If you notice the red ball in my right hand, I've catched another monster already but didn't throw it to battle the Poptop because Ash was already battling it and I'm afraid it will die. So I let Ash did the beating (what a gentleman) and I successfully catched it.

If you've played Starbound you must know that dangerously cute creature that hums a sweet tune is one of the most iconic monsters in Starbound. Poptops are unique monster type that look harmless, whistling and wander around aimlessly, usually in lush forest area. But when an adventurer is on sight, Poptops will show its ferocious side. Poptops are so adorable that it have a real life plushie as well as an in-game plushie.

The monster taming feature don't have much more to it except to equip your pets with collar to buff them, or tether them for guard duty perhaps, or when you just want to summon multiple pets at once using the Pet Tether tool. As I said before, it'd be nice if these "small touch" polished a bit more. And for the monster catching, maybe make the NPCs to be able to have pets too? You know, so you can.. challenge each other. That's just a thought, though.

^{She confessed!}