Don't Starve

Juno · Apr 6, 2015

At a Glance

Don't Starve is a wilderness survival/roguelike game, and the premise is simple enough - you're dumped in the middle of a harsh, unforgiving world and you need to figure out how to stay alive. How you live in this world is up to you; will you build a safe haven for yourself, farm for sustinence, and research new ways to craft and improve your home? Or will you live a nomadic life and explore every corner of the world, killing everything in your way and eating their remains?

Do whatever it takes to survive the monsters, the cold, the darkness and, most importantly, Don't Starve!

Gameplay

Don't Starve is a game that does not hold your hand through the mechanics and gameplay - with the exception of a well-dressed man popping up in the beginning to give you some advice about finding food before the night comes, you do not get any more hints on what to do. For this reason, it can be quite difficult to grasp in the beginning, and it may take some trial and error (and probably dying a few times) to figure out a good strategy for yourself on how to survive each night. While this may be frustrating at first, it's also great because it gives players a lot of freedom to come up with their own life, and once you've found a playstyle you're comfortable with, survival becomes a lot more fun (but definitely not easier).

Character selection is pretty straightforward at first - you only have Wilson, the intrepid Gentleman Scientist unlocked, but as you earn experience and unlock more characters from survival, you'll be able to try each one out and decide which suits your playstyle best. Every character comes with their own unique set of drawbacks and advantages, whether it's more health to take more hits (at the cost of less sturdy mental health), or being a robot that can eat spoiled foods with no penalties, but takes damage in the rain. The cast is an interesting bunch, and I would recommend playing each character at least once just to see what they are all capable of.

The basics of the game are reminiscent of other games in its genre, like Minecraft and Terraria - for those unfamiliar, that means you'll spend quite a bit of time foraging for supplies and figuring out how to craft better tools to work with, as you slowly build up your camp or home for more effective survival. It sounds like a lot of monotonous work, but when you're actually in-game, it definitely doesn't feel that way, as there is tons of content packed into each randomly generated world that will keep you busy for hours on end. You will race the clock every day to gather what you need and spend the cold, pitch-black nights by the fire, researching new weapons and survival tools, while cooking and healing and thinking about how you'll prioritize the next short day.

Ultimately, survival boils down to how well you manage your Hunger, Health and Sanity, which can be tricky as all three are related in some way, and if one suffers, the others will be affected. Hunger and health are self-explanatory, but sanity is not something seen too often in survival games, and it's probably the hardest meter to maintain - not only does it drop around certain monsters or by eating some foods, it gradually decreases every night, too. There are certain things you can do, and foods you can eat to increase your sanity, but if it drops too low, you actually begin to hallucinate. And, if left unchecked, hallucinations will actually become a physical threat that will hurt your health and kill you. This is certainly an interesting mechanic that I love and hate - it makes the game more unique in comparison to other survival games I've played, but taking care of your mental health here can be quite difficult, and failure to do so has probably killed me more than anything else in the game.

But for the most part, if/until you go insane, the hostile environment is usually your biggest worry. With the exception of a few passive animals, most creatures you encounter will try to kill you, and without the proper equipment, even a couple of bees can be quite deadly (just ask White Mage). Building a fire at night is not only a good idea if you want to see in the dark, it's essential for survival because once the light goes out, the "Darkness" (or "Charlie", as it is called) will kill you in about 3 seconds. Additionally, even if you do opt for a passive lifestyle of foraging or farming in seclusion, you will not have complete peace because every full moon brings Hounds that will attack your camp, so you always need to be prepared to fight.

Don't Starve really knows how to keep you on your toes at all times, which makes every moment of the game fun and engaging because you can never stop working your butt off to feel safe; you'll never really find yourself having an idle moment where you're just standing around doing nothing.

As a roguelike, death is permanent and this might leave some people feeling fed up after a couple of tries, because you lose everything upon death and must start from scratch again, and it can be quite difficult and time-consuming to build up a good base as is. However, for players that like a challenge, every death brings you a little more experience and gives you a better idea of what your goals should be, and how to be more efficient in the next game.

Aesthetics

The art style in Don't Starve is quite unlike what I've seen in any other game before. It's reminiscent of Tim Burton's work, but in a way that's simultaneously 2D and 3D - the world itself is 3D and can be viewed from all angles, but the characters, items, monsters, etc. are all 2D, and it really makes the game stand out in terms of its style.

As for the music and sounds, they also fit the setting of the game very well. Every character's "voice" is played with a different instrument matching their traits and physical attributes (ie. the tiny, young Willow's voice is a flute, and the heavy, muscular Wolfgang is sounded by a tuba), and the ambient noises are dynamic yet consistent in style - it changes depending on the situation and environment (different ambience relative to your sanity level in-game, as well as seasons, time of day, etc.), but it always has the unique Don't Starve quality to it.

Adventure Mode, DLCs & More

The cryptic nature of the game means that even its story is hidden, and yes, there actually is a story. For most players, they may struggle to survive so much that they never even discover that there is an Adventure Mode, let alone how to unlock it, but it's definitely a fun and challenging experience (that I won't be spoiling), and it tells an interesting story without deviating from the core elements of the game, as you are still expected to survive as you do normally, but with a couple twists thrown your way.

Since its release, the developers of Don't Starve have been adding new content almost every month in updates, which is really cool as it continuously gives fans something to look forward to. Some updates are just minor bug fixes and a couple new crafting recipes or creatures, but there have been quite a few large updates that add completely new regions to explore and new mechanics, such as the ability to go caving and the addition of new special characters.

There have also been two DLCs released in the past year or so, but I won't go into them in much detail for this review, as I want to focus on the base game. In short, Reign of Giants adds a lot of new content and challenges to the game (new seasons, new meters, new hazards, etc.), and Don't Starve Together is a standalone that's almost identical to the base game, but you get to bring your friends along for the journey!

Final Thoughts

Don't Starve is a unique take on the popular survival genre, and is a deceptively hard game that can leave some players discouraged with its difficulty and lack of instructions. But for those that enjoy the survival genre in general and like a good challenge, you'll find yourself losing hours in this game as you figure out how to survive its harsh, unforgiving world.