Don't Starve (PC)

First up, I want to apologise to the guy who was kind enough to gift this game to me as I've taken forever to get around to playing it. For a while I at least had the excuse of it not actually being finished yet, but that hasn't been true since it was released back in April, so I'm sorry about that. I done fucked up.

Today I'm taking a short look at Don't Starve, an "uncompromising wilderness survival game" by Klei, the makers of Shank and Mark of the Ninja... both of which I haven't played yet either. Man I really am bad at this.

Anyway, the developers say that part of the fun of the game is trying new stuff out and learning things for yourself. So if you've got any interest in playing the game and haven't already, by reading this you'll apparently be depriving yourself of fun. Just thought I'd warn you.

(Click the images to expand them to 1280x720 resolution.)

Okay the first thing I get to do is choose my character, from a selection of one. It seems that there's nine of them in total, but right now I'm stuck with Wilson the Gentleman Scientist. The guy looks awesome though, I'm digging his scribbly waistcoat and avian haircut, (plus he can grow a magnificent beard!) So I think there's a fair chance he'd be the guy I'd want to play as anyway.

Reticulating spiders? Well that can't mean anything good for me. It's nice to see that the old SimCity 2000 joke is still around and doing well though.

The game gave me plenty of options to tweak the world before I started by adjusting the map size, the amount of food and the number of animals etc. But I left it all on defaults for now.

Uh, okay thanks for that, mysterious 40s movie star who just appeared out of the ground in a puff of smoke.

Oh, he's gone and disappeared as quickly as he arrived. Well that's fine, he seemed likely to be a bit of a bastard. Also it doesn't seem like there'll be any voice acting in this, from Wilson or anyone else.

Right, so I'm trapped on cartoony landscape with cool paper cut-out looking water to my north, a dead pig shrine to my left and a big pile of shit to my south.

I can steer Wilson around with the keys and click on items with the mouse cursor, though it's shy and doesn't want to show up right now on the screenshots. Trust me though it's there, and currently hovering over that pitchfork.

Well I've been given a pitchfork to start with and my only mission objective is "don't starve" so I'm going to take that as a hint that I'm supposed to be setting up a farm. Clicking on the ground with the shovel removes the grass and lets me carry it, so right now I'm filling up my 15 space inventory bar at the bottom of the screen with clumps of turf.

Hang on, I've just had a thought: food takes a while to grow doesn't it? Even if I do figure out how to plant some seeds here it's not likely I'll be enjoying a salad this evening. I'm going to have to do some exploring to scavenge up some snacks to ensure my survival in the short-term.

A worm hole! It may look a bit like my old buddy Sarlaac Pit Monster (who I totally owned in Super Star Wars), but I'm sure this is actually a portal to food and adventure!

Well it seems to have chewed on him a bit and then spat him out again, which isn't exactly the outcome I was hoping for, but hey at least he's still mostly alive! Any leap into a spiky death pit you can walk away from is a good one, that's my philosophy.

Also looking at the ground I think I may have actually ended up somewhere else. So that all worked out in the end.

Can I do anything with these trees I wonder? I guess not.

Wilson makes comments like this on everything I click on and I appreciate his observations. They're all pretty much useless, but I appreciate them regardless.


90 SECONDS LATER.

It's getting dark now and all I've found so far is a carrot and a few berries I pulled from a bush. Also I'm going to have to build a campfire soon as well. I can tell it's going to be important as Wilson actually mentioned that I should do it. It's obvious that the developers really want players to figure this all out for themselves, so if they feel they have to explain something then it must be an issue of game-ending severity.

The trouble is that if I want build a campfire I'm going to need to collect some more cut grass and two logs. Apparently all these clumps of grass I just dug up aren't suitable for the task.

But to get logs I need to cut down trees with an axe and I don't have one yet. I've harvested plenty of twigs from saplings along the way, but I haven't found a single piece of flint yet.

Well I've got about a minute left I reckon to cut some long grass, find some flint, craft an axe, and cut down a tree or two before it gets dark. No rush then.

Unfortunately I wandered past a bee hive along the way and I couldn't help but try grabbing some honey (because I need food to live). It worked out about as well as anyone with any sense could've predicted and as Wilson died of a fatal allergy to a dozen bee stings, his pockets apparently also lost the will to live, letting all of his gear explode out of his corpse across the ground.

Well that was all very inconvenient.

I suppose these pig shrines are respawn points then? I guess I'll have to make it a priority to find another one soon as this one's kinda broken now. Still, at least I managed to skip over night-time, plus I got even some marble out of the wreckage. I may not have any grass, logs, twigs or flint, never mind an axe, but at least I have a bit of rock now.

Though if all that stuff is still lying where he died to the bees perhaps I can just walk back and grab it. 

Oh damn, that's a fair bit further away than I was expecting. It's cool that resources are clearly marked on the map though, that's a smart feature. Having a map at all is a smart feature in fact and I'm very grateful to have it.


LATER.

And then I walked too close to a robot horse thing while investigating these mysterious trees and got Wilson killed again. Well now I'm going to have to remember where this place is as well so I can come back and collect my marble. I don't know what I can make with it, but it's rare and I want it.

I wonder if there's an option somewhere to stop your inventory spilling out on death, because I can see that getting pretty annoying after a while, especially if you've been harvesting grass, twigs and logs all day.

It'd be cool actually if it had a setting like Terraria, where you can choose between softcore (keep everything but money on death), mediumcore (drop all items), and hardcore (permadeath mode for crazy people who like to lose all their progress entirely).

Oh hang on, never mind. It turns out that I just lost the game, so I guess having to collect my dropped gear isn't actually an issue after all! Seems like in this ironman mode is mandatory; you get your one shot (or more if you're lucky enough to find a pig shrine) and then you're done. Then your entire world and everything you built is wiped and there's no way to load a previous save.

Well I'm still a long way to figuring out the game's appeal (or what I'm meant to do in it), so I'm going to start up another game and see if I do any better now I know I'm supposed to harvest everything in sight.


SECOND TRY, 90 SECONDS LATER.

Hmm, do I grab the evil flower? For all I know it could be handy in a thousand recipes, but on the other hand every time I go into places like this I'm swarmed by bees or attacked by a clockwork knight. Plus it's evil. 

I know, I'll take the flower and I'll take the creepy music box, but I'll leave the gnome alone. Let's not tempt fate too much.


TWO MINUTES LATER.

I think I may have actually gotten lucky the first time around, as the pitchfork and the resurrection shrine seem to be randomly appearing items. All I'm finding around here are dead trees, murky black puddles, and evil tentacles shooting out of the ground to whip at me.


90 SECONDS LATER.

Well this a pain in the ass; I need to construct a Science Machine to build more advanced items, but to build that I'll need rocks (plus gold, but one problem at a time.) But to mine this rock I need a pickaxe, which requires two pieces of flint.

Plus I've got the same problem as before that I also need to make an axe to cut down trees to start a fire. Basically, it seems that if you can't find flint in this game you won't be doing much. But I've still got a minute and a half left, there's still hope.


A MINUTE AND A HALF LATER.

Well at least now I know what happens at night if you haven't managed to start a fire: nocturnal animals creep out and eat you alive. There doesn't seem to be much I can do about it though, so that's my second game over.

Alright then, lets try this again.


A MINUTE OR SO INTO MY THIRD TRY.

Two pieces of flint in the same area! Plus a third piece along the top of the screen; man I've hit the mother lode. This area also has grass and twigs in abundance, so I can finally get started on harvesting resources.


90 SECONDS LATER.

Well it turns out that harvesting resources is kind of boring. Though I have to keep chopping down trees and clicking on plants or else I'll be in trouble later. It's not like I can just build a fire and then I cross that off my list for the rest of the game, I need to set the thing going every single day, which means I need a stash of logs.

But it turns out that items wear out quickly as well, so I don't get many trees out of one axe before the thing snaps and I have to make a new one. So I need a good stash of flint and twigs too. Though time spent cutting down trees and harvesting is time I'm not spending gathering food, so I also need to keep my 'don't starve' objective in mind as well. The game's bloody relentless, there's always something that desperately needs doing immediately or constantly.


LATER THAT DAY.

Alright I've got my fire going and I've built my Science Machine, so now I can investigate all the cool new items I can construct. Seems that I can build chests, animal traps, pig houses, wooden walls and all kinds of stuff! And they're all built instantly as well, no waiting!

The thing is, to make a wall I need rope and boards, which are both made by refining resources I've gathered. Four logs are needed for boards and two boards are needed for the wall, so after a day's work I have enough for one single wall. Well, I'd give it a try but I don't have enough grass to make rope. Wait, is it getting darker?

OH COME ON, the fire went out in the middle of the night and I lost again! All that work has just been thrown away. I was almost ready to build a wall as well; how can I truly get started in this without a home base?


ATTEMPT #4.

My fourth attempt was initially a great success, as I found myself able to find enough resources to just about stay on top of my survival concerns, even though I wasn't quite able to explore the crafting tree so much. I even met a walking storage box that I could drop items into, which I decided to call 'The Luggage' because I am now prone to such things after being driven insane by endlessly clicking on trees.

But the happy tale of successful Wilson eventually came to a tragic end as I left it just slightly too late to place my campfire that night and found myself desperately and uselessly clicking around the pitch black screen, unable to find anywhere to put the damn thing.

In retrospect I could've built a just built a torch I suppose, but smart ideas like that are much easier to come up with when you're not four seconds away from losing four days of harvested crap. You know, I appreciate what they're going for here, adding serious consequences to failure to make the player feel concerned about their situation. But mostly it's just making me feel like I've wasted my time.


FINAL ATTEMPT.

Alright I realise that this is a game about discovering just a little bit more each attempt through continual trial and error, but I'm only playing it for a couple of hours and I'd like to get an idea of how the game evolves before I turn this off, so I'm tweaking the settings to throw things massively in my favour next time around.

With this much food and resources surrounding me I should be able to last a few days longer and explore the build menu a little.


SIX (IN GAME) DAYS LATER.

A bee mine? What does that even mean!? Is it like a land mine with bees in it? I don't suppose it matters much right now anyway seeing as I have no bees.

I've survived for almost a week this time, though I've been burning through a ton of axes and pickaxes along the way, plus I'm getting dangerously low on health right now. I finally had enough supplies to build an Alchemy Engine though, which opens up new construction options, and now I'm trying to decide if want to try setting up a farm, attempt to trap some animals again (you know, I bet I would've had more luck with that the first time if I'd tried using bait...), or maybe I could even build a wall and see how that helps me.

All my survival instincts (honed from years of obsessive Terraria play) are telling me that I want to get some kind of base assembled as soon as possible, but then in Terraria I didn't have to continually wander the land looking for carrots so I guess its usefulness may be limited.


SOON.

Well this was certainly a good use of my resources. I put a line of four sturdy straw bundle walls next to each other, dug up a patch of grass below them, then fitted an awesome wooden floor in its place. I... have absolutely no idea if this has helped anything or not.

All I can really do here is build one of everything I suppose and see what it is. Then I'll have a better idea of what I can use it for. I just have to be extra careful that I don't piss off any of the wildlife and throw away my last drip of health. I've already got Wilson stung to death by bees and mauled by a clockwork knight, he doesn't need 'nibbled by rabid squirrel' on his obituary list. 
 

What the fuck, a surprise wild boar attack out of nowhere? I wasn't even exploring! Look, I'm right next to my camp!

I'd gathered 38 logs, 71 pieces of cut grass, 36 twigs, 85 rocks, 34 pieces of flint over the last hour of gameplay... I was finally able to start building things and this asshole went and took it all away from me!

It's really lucky for me that I'd found a respawn point on day 3 really. Alright then, time to start the long trek back to camp to collect all my stuff again. I'm starting to think it'll be worth investigating what weapons and armour I can craft next time I'm at my Alchemy Engine.

I was kinda counting on being able to pick my own fights, but if enemies going to being wandering over to me by themselves then I'll need something to defend myself. I wonder if 'Tesla coil' is on that crafting list. 


TWO AND A HALF MINUTES LATER.

The fuck? The creatures were still waiting for me when I got back and now I can't outrun them! I don't know what I did to piss this game off so much, but it really doesn't seem to like me a great deal.

Well that's that then. I decided to look up what I'd done wrong this time and it turns out that these guys just spawn in to slaughter you every week or two, as a way of disqualifying players who've wasted their time and resources on nice wooden floors instead of spears and armour.

The end.

The game counts every death on the chart, even if you were resurrected afterwards, so here's how I did on my first five attempts.

I didn't starve once! So I'm calling that a total win.

Plus I unlocked Willow the Firestarter, which is a bit of a surprise considering I was playing on my ultra-easy custom world. Well I would give her a shot, but somehow I don't think setting half the map on fire's going to help my chances of finding supplies any.


I find it hard to judge Don't Starve, because it's obviously aimed at an audience of the kind of gamers who'd immediately flip the permadeath switch to 'on' in any game that has the feature. The type of people who hate hand-holding and safety nets, and are big fans of continual failure. I on the other hand get a bit concerned when a game's so much as missing a quick save button, so I'm entirely the wrong person to be playing it.

The thing is, this really was the easiest mode I was playing, especially when I put the item spawns up. There are more challenging world settings than this and all worlds apparently become harder and harder to exist in as hounds spawn more frequently and the temperature drops during winter. I read a bit more about the game, and it seems that things can eventually get to the point where you have to leave warm clothes next to a resurrection stone just to make sure you don't immediately freeze to death when respawning. And I haven't even had to worry about his sanity meter yet. The developers weren't joking when they said it was uncompromising.

Klei haven't compromised on the game updates though either, as it's been getting new items, features, fixes and improvements every month or so free of charge. Everything about the game gives the feeling that it's been put together by people who really give a shit.

The graphics are very unique and stylised, and probably not to everyone's tastes (especially if you're not a Tim Burton fan), though personally I think the game looks great. It all works to create the overwhelming feeling that you're entirely screwed. Mechanically everything seem to works the way the devs intended as well, though I found it quickly turned into a massive grind for supplies when I started to get my head around the basics, but then maybe I was just playing it wrong.

So yeah I'm not going to criticise the gameplay, as it's not my kind of game. It is what it is and that's fine, but I can't say it brought me much happiness. I'm going back to Terraria now, where the pickaxes don't break, I only eat when I want a stat boost, and my metaphorical sandcastle is in no danger of getting washed away by the equally metaphorical tide.

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If you'd like to leave a comment about Don't Starve or all those things I said about it, then feel free to do so. It'd be nice to get some positivity on the page after all my whining. Or you could join in with the whining, it's all good.