Starbound Has A Lot Of Trees
No, seriously. This may be the most tree-rich game I've ever come across. And yet, while Starbound's latest trailer runs through woodlands of all shapes, sizes, and colors, Chucklefish chuckles in its oh-so-recognizably fish-like fashion at my pitiful notions of impressiveness. It's designated this bouquet of majestic foliage as a "small selection of the art that will be present in the finished game" from just one of many possible biomes. "Terraria in space," I'd say, is a misnomer. This strikes me more as Super Terraria Galaxy - yes, planetary exploration is the focus, but it's lightyears beyond its spiritual predecessor in terms of sheer ambition. I mean, we're talking entire randomly generated galaxies of randomly generated planets with randomly generated foliage and creatures. It sounds insane. It probably is insane. But I'm excited about a game's trees. That has to mean something, right? Venture past the break for the full trailer.
As Adam discussed, there's also building, crafting, combat, and penguins. Best of all, you can invite other players to visit your home planet, because you own a planet - what other reason do you need? Executed correctly, this could be an amazing, constantly evolving place to explore by whatever means you deem necessary. Granted, it's a teetering tower of wonderful ideas, so anything less than obsessive attention to detail will probably result in a collapse that'll have Godzilla considering other career options.
This much random generation, obviously, could result in blander moment-by-moment than a bread and office supplies sampling. Encouragingly, however, every single item in your potentially infinite universe can be examined for a description, so clearly there's a colossal focus on giving personality to every inch of this unbelievably sizable beast.
Even so, it'd be foolish not to eye something like this with a universe-sized helping of caution. So for now, I'll just stick with my slightly panicky refrain of please be good, please be good, please be good.