Game Review: Don’t Starve

This week’s game-that-you-must-play is another small offering from a three-man development studio known as Klei Entertainment.  The game is called Don’t Starve and if you’re a fan of survival games that are completely unforgiving, this is one for you.  The basic premise is as simple as the name - try not to starve.  Of course, there are plenty of other ways to die, so you need to avoid a few other things as well.

You begin the game as Wilson (other characters are unlockable later).  Wilson is some random guy who wakes up in a deserted land, apparently brought there by a mysterious figure known as Maxwell.  You start out with nothing but your wits and must quickly collect resources in order to keep yourself alive and progressing.  You’ll need to look around your land and find food, naturally, but you’ll also want materials for a fire, weapons, armor, a science machine, farms and a pile of other things.

As you make your way in the strange land, day will turn into night, summer will turn into winter (and bring with it a freezing cold) and, at least when playing Wilson, you’ll grow a nice beard.  By utilizing tools such as axes, shovels and pick axes, you’ll destroy the environment around you in an effort to horde the things you need. 

Of course, no survival game is complete without a host of enemies to make your day even worse.  While you struggle for food, you’ll have to avoid nests of spiders, angry hounds, beefalo herds in heat, giant one-eyed birds, walrus warriors, werepigs, huge angry trees and the dreaded deerclops.  You can also choose to fight said monsters, and the rewards they drop are often worth the battle.

Oh, and you’ll have to watch out for your sanity.  Wilson will go crazy when confronted with monsters or other things.  He’ll also go nuts over time, but taking a good nap or doing some science helps you stay in the safe zone.  If you drop too far, nasty shadow beasts will creep out and try to make things worse for you.

I’ve been playing this game for a while and it’s just as addictive at day 1 as it is at day 100.  There’s always new land to explore and new challenges to face.  There’s also some sort of adventure mode that you can get to by crossing through “Maxwell’s Door”, but I’ve yet to figure that one out.  Another great thing is that the developers are constantly adding new content (about once every 3-4 weeks it seems), so if you put the game down and come back to it later, it will be a different experience.  They just added caves last week, another aspect that I’ve yet to delve in to.

For the low price of $14.99 (you can pick it up on Steam or from their official website), Don’t Starve is a game that has plenty of replayability and will keep you on your toes.  Just don’t expect to do too well right off the bat.  In fact, expect to get killed several times before you finally get the basics down.  Once you do though, the rest of the game is a discovery experience.  I officially rate this as one of the most excellent games out there right now.

Don’t Starve promo courtesy of dontstarvegame.com