Don’t Starve Review

By – Steven Smith

“Say pal, you don’t look so good. You better find something to eat before night comes!” And with no further instruction, you are left on your own in Klei Entertainment’s wilderness survival game, Don’t Starve. You start the game off as Wilson, a gentleman scientist, waking up in this strange world where most things can kill you. This includes hunger, cold, various creatures and even the dark. The object is to survive long enough that you can fully explore this land in search of answers. In the beginning, you have nothing but the clothes on your back leaving everything needed for survival to be gathered and crafted.

The first thing to do is figure out how to actually play the game. There is no instruction manual, reference sheet or in-game tutorial. So starting out is just a lot of trial and error as you learn to navigate the interface and to use the various game items. In some ways this is a wonderful aspect as it brings a real sense of discovery when you figure out what an object is and how it`s used. However, there is also a lot of aggravation involved in making those discoveries. The interface is a prime example. You use the mouse to either craft something from the crafting menu or use an item from your inventory. The mouse can also control movement, simply click on a space in the game world and you walk there.

I discovered, quite by accident, that by holding down the mouse button you could keep the character constantly moving towards the cursor, this made the long treks across the game world much more bearable. However, this is something that could have been revealed at the start.  When things start to get hectic, moving and using items simultaneously becomes tricky with the mouse alone. It was after almost two hours of playing when I finally figured out that movement can also be controlled using the WASD keys. I have also found that the arrow keys zoom in and out as well as rotate the view.  This was an exciting discovery, but also my first real complaint about the game. I don’t normally play games using WASD and Don’t Starve does not have any options to remap the keys.  If the intent of the developers is to make the player discover which keys to use then having an option to remap the keys would ruin the surprise. Although I don’t feel that losing the ability to customize the controls is a good trade off.

The in-game mechanics are more intuitive and can quickly be learned from the clues given, if you pay attention. For example, there are three status meters that represent Hunger, Sanity and Health. The lower the Hunger meter the closer you are to starvation, this decreases by itself gradually over time. When the meter drops to zero you are starving. At that point, you will start losing health and when health is at zero, you are dead. As your Sanity drops you start to have hallucinations of strange creatures, eventually these nightmarish images can become real enough to attack and kill you. Certain actions taken in the game will affect these meters, causing them to flash either red or green meaning the action helps or hurts that status. At first I didn’t pay close attention to these and just concentrated on keeping myself warm and fed.  I then started to see things that weren’t really there as my Sanity had deteriorated. That is when I really started watching what I was doing.  I found that some foods, and even some actions, can negatively affect Sanity and Health. Part of the game is learning which foods are safe to eat and which to avoid.  In some cases, a food that is harmful can be cooked and become beneficial, but that is up to you to discover.

The crafting system is pretty straightforward. You must first gather resources, most of which are renewable but a select few are in limited supply.  Resources, like berries, grass or twigs, will grow back in time.  Others, such as rocks, flint and gold, are fairly plentiful at the start but do not replenish. Cutting down a tree sometimes yields one or more pine cones which can then be planted and grow into new trees.  Unlike some other games, all crafting recipes in Don’t Starve are known from the beginning. It is just a matter gathering the correct materials. There is a tier system however, where some crafted items are used in other recipes.

For example, you must craft an axe in order to cut down trees and gather logs which can then be turned into lumber. Crafting rope and combining it with the lumber allows you to make a wooden fence. This does not mean that every craftable item is available right from the start, some items must be researched at either a Science Machine or an Alchemy Machine. Both machines must also, of course, be crafted.  While standing next to the proper machine you will have access to a larger selection of items from the crafting menu.  Creating one of these will unlock that recipe and allow you to craft that item anywhere.  Since there are no instructions, it is up to you to figure out how your newly crafted items work.  Tools such as an axe, torch or fishing pole are self explanatory, but the game also allows you to create wood flooring or a top hat but it’s not really clear why.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. Rather than wasting time trying to figure out all of these things why not do a quick internet search instead?  Well I thought of that too.  After several hours of playing, I tried to lookup up a few tidbits and found that many of them were wrong.  More correctly they were out-dated, because Klei Entertainment is still releasing patches, updates and even new content.  Some items and mechanics have been added or deleted and others have been rebalanced.

The specific benefits of certain foods have been adjusted, so that nice long comprehensive chart of every edible in the game becomes less reliable as time goes by.  I found several lists of “Beginners Tips” that were full of exploits that had been patched out several versions ago.  In fact, while I was writing this review, an update was released that also added a new element to the game.  Caves!  No longer are you stuck exploring just the surface of the game world as new wonders and creatures await you underground.  Already there have been helpful people posting information about the games’ subterranean mechanics, as well as statements from the developers that they are already planning to make changes to the new cave system.  Some players need to constantly consult a guide or walkthrough while playing. If this is you, then you will likely just get more lost and confused trying the same tactic here.  However, if you decide to eschew this practice you will be in for a little extra frustration in exchange for a greater sense of accomplishment.

Don’t Starve isn’t all gathering and building.  There are many dangers in the game.  Your time in the world is broken up into day and night cycles.  Late at night it gets dark, very dark, and you cannot see anything in the blackness.  There is something in the darkness however, something very dangerous.  You can’t tell what it is but you will be killed if you remain in the pitch black nothingness of night.  So start a fire and make sure you have enough fuel to keep it going all through the night.

Come morning, the game auto saves and you are free to explore again, but you are still not safe. There are also weather conditions to deal with.  Rain is good for plants but bad for the sanity level of a certain gentleman scientist who hasn’t crafted an umbrella.  You must also watch for lightning strikes as they can hit a tree and start a fire which spreads quite quickly.  After a while you may survive long enough to see the change of seasons as Winter moves in. This means snow, ice and hypothermia.  When a character gets too cold the edges of your screen start to develop frost.  I felt this was a nice, unobtrusive way to convey the freezing temperatures while still letting you know you are in obvious danger.  If left in the cold too long, your character will freeze to death.  If you are careful and plan ahead then you should be able to survive the ever changing environmental conditions.  Then all you have to worry about are spiders, bees, Pig Men, tree monsters or the random wolf attack.

Dying in Don’t Starve is usually permanent.  There are ways to come back but they require a bit of planning and learning some of secrets of the game.  Getting a second chance at this virtual life however is not a guarantee of success.  At one point my character was freezing, rather than stopping to build a fire I was foolishly determined to make it back to my main campsite. I had plenty of food and supplies there waiting for me.  I didn’t make it.  Fortunately, I had arranged for a way to cheat death before hand and so I was resurrected.  Except that I came back without any supplies and far away from my camp.  Being that it was still winter time I quickly froze to death again, this time permanently. Dying and having to start over will always give you new landscapes to explore as a fresh world is randomly generated each new game.  This helps keep the game feeling new as you die over and over again.  I have lost track of how many times my character died in the game, but ironically none of my deaths have been caused by starvation.

Don’t Starve uses hand drawn 2D assets to represent a 3D world.  This is no longer a new technique, but it works well for this game.  The art style has a slightly Gothic feel to it that vaguely remind me of a Tim Burton movie, but not so much that detracts from the wilderness scenery. There are enough similarities between the game world and ours that you can recognize most things for what they are, however there is something just a bit off in them. Spiders have just two large expressive eyes and rabbits have antenne.  There is also a lot of humor mixed in to the game that comes out in the text, especially when the characters speak.  Clicking on just about any item in the game elicits a one line comment from the player character.  Not always helpful or informative, it is still worth seeing what the character has to say.  One point I found interesting is that musical instruments are used for the voices of the characters.  When Wilson speaks you get the sound of a harmonica to accompany captioned text.  Each character has their voice represented by a different wind instrument.

Yes, there are other playable characters, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. There is an old time strongman, a young girl who is also a bit of a pyromaniac and even a robot among several others.  Of course you won’t really know anything about these other characters without playing them.  This encourages you to try out each of them several times to learn their unique abilities.  All characters are unlockable through playing the game, although some are harder to get than others.  When starting a new game you can change your character along with a number of other settings that adjust the difficulty of the game. There are separate settings that control the scarcity of food, resources and creatures.  One setting even let’s you change the overall size of the world map.  Having the option to change these different settings independently allows you to fine tune the difficulty for how you want to play.  This is a nice change from the typical Easy/Medium/Hard found in other titles.

While I enjoyed the game overall, there are a few issues I have with the game.  There are only so many items that can be crafted and a limited number of ways they can be used.  Once you figure out how to survive for a while the game can become fairly repetitive.  If you don’t actively explore every bit of the land mass you will spend the rest of the game just hunting, gathering and farming.  Of course some players may actually like this. How does the game reward the laid back player who just wants to enjoy their time on a deserted island?

That’s my other problem, it doesn’t. The developers must have felt that simply keeping yourself well fed was not enough of a challenge.  At random times during the game a vicious pack of wolves is placed somewhere in the world.  You then have anywhere from a few hours to a few days before they find you and attack. The longer you defiantly continue to live the more wolves in each pack.  In the difficulty settings you can adjust the frequency of these random attacks, but not stop them completely.  This is unfortunate because otherwise this would be a great game alternative to the likes of MineCraft or Farmville for the more “casual” gaming crowd.

There are three different versions of the game to choose from; Steam, Stand Alone and Chrome. The Steam version is installed and gets it’s updates through the client.  The Standalone version comes with a key that allows you to download the updates on your schedule.  You can also install the game as an app in your Chrome browser.  After registering my game key I was able to play on several different computers after simply logging in to my Gmail account.  Sadly I was unable continue my saved game progress across different machines.

Conclusion – Is It Worth Your Money?

Being the latest entry in a series of Survival-Craft games, Don’t Starve might sound like more of a niche title. However it is accessible enough for those that don’t normally play this type of game. If anything you have read, seen or heard has interested you in anyway then I would absolutely recommend spending the $15 to pick it up.  Especially because they are not charging you for new content when it’s released.  This essentially means the game comes with a lot of free DLC, both now and in the future, which is another plus in today’s gaming market.