Don’t Starve is a rogue-like survival game by Mark of the Ninja creators, Klei Entertainment. The game throws you into a dark and dangerous world as the character Wilson, the Gentleman Scientist with one goal in mind; to survive. This game by no means is a new release considering it has been out on other formats for quite a few months, but the main focus of this review will be on the console version released on the PlayStation 4. When you start up the game the first thing you notice is that its interesting art style that blends cute and dark visuals does so in a very pleasing way that is refreshing to see in the age of super realism and the over popularity of the color brown.
Another aspect of the game is that the characters voices are quite literally sounds; what I mean is that a different musical instrument represents each character when they talk about things in the world. As soon as you begin your game you are thrown right into it with no narrative or story. The only bit of interaction between your character and anyone else is from Maxwell, the game’s antagonist taunting you to find food and from then on, you are left all by yourself. No guide, no tutorials, just you and a big dangerous world. So getting into the meat of the gameplay I will just start off by saying that this game is tough and by tough I mean expect to die often. It should also be noted that Don’t Starve’s deaths are permanent, meaning hours and hours of work and exploration are thrown out of the window. Keeping in the tradition of a good rogue-like Don’t Starve’s worlds are also randomly generated, meaning that no player will ever have the same world each time they play, giving a new experience each and every time which also adds on the difficulty of the game.
The biggest factors to your survival are the characters’ food, health and sanity meters; food and health being simple to understand, with the sanity meter being a different monster all together. The sanity meter rises and falls depending on certain factors while you are playing, for example being in the dark as most of the characters will lower their sanity. The same goes for facing off against certain kinds of mob enemies. So a word of advice, make sure you pick a lot of flowers. Strangely enough, though Don’t Starve’s difficulty has to be one of its most gripping features, the fact that you die so often means that each time you start up a new game you can use the experiences from all your past playthroughs and make it even longer through the game. Also, even though the game is challenging and death is permanent that does not mean the game’s difficulty makes it in any way not an enjoyable experience.
One of my biggest complaints about the game though is at times the random nature of the game can be a little unfair and a few of my best runs have ended with deaths happening out of nowhere, random lighting bolts starting forest fires that I couldn’t escape, or freaking hounds; oh, man how I hate those hounds. In the end it has to be said even though those random events can be unfair sometimes, it is the randomness of the game that adds a lot to what makes the game so fun to play. Even after playing through the game for fifty or so hours it never stays the same and always gives the player an interesting world to explore and survive. Besides random worlds and unexpected events one of the biggest elements of the game is its crafting system, which is all divided up into different subjects of crafting.
Pretty much everything you can pick up in the world is something you can craft with, and you’ll need to start crafting very quickly when the game starts. There are simple crafting items, such as torches and tools, but as the days pass you will need to start crafting armor, weapons, farms, magical items and even a pretty dapper top hat, all in the name of survival of course. The best thing about the crafting has to be how the User interface works with it, all the crafting and meters for the character are right on the screen and can easily be accessed with no need to go into any other screens or menus.
Don’t Starve also is not lacking when it comes to content. This game has a lot of things to keep you interested, including unlockable characters that have their own advantages and disadvantages to keep things fresh. Though if just having new characters to play around with isn’t enough like I mentioned before no one generated world is ever the same, so there’s always a lot to explore and find and lets not forget the caves and the ruins, which are in their own right whole different worlds to explore, with their own mobs, and items to find. Caves and ruins add new worlds, but they are not the only other features in the game. If you happen to find the Maxwell Door located in the game world you will be able to access the Adventure Mode, which is the story mode in Don’t Starve. Adventure mode is a set of challenge worlds that Maxwell has set up for you, though I will not spoil any of it for you. I just want to recommend that you spend a lot of time crafting and understanding the world of Don’t Starve before you ever try out the Adventure mode, because Maxwell does not hold anything back in these challenge stages.
Now honestly, I could go on and on about this game, but I think all that really needs to be said at this point is that if you have a PlayStation 4 or a PC, then you need to play this game. Don’t Starve is an extremely enjoyable and refreshingly challenging game that gives you a great world to play in. Don’t Starve is one of the first of many hit indie games that will be hitting the PlayStation Network in the next few months, and if this is a taste of what is to come then let me just say I’m starving for some more.
themothmangamer 