Don't Starve review time, folks. Don't Starve is a new indie game from Klei Entertainment, released on April 23 after a lengthy public beta. As you can tell from the title, it's a game of survival. And it's a very compelling one, with a few mostly minor drawbacks.
In Don't Starve, players are thrust into a forbidding natural world and challenged only to survive. That's harder than it sounds. At first, it's easy enough: within a few minutes, I figured out how to set traps to catch rabbits, which offer enough sustenance to hold off starvation for a long time. But foraging will only take you so far. Sooner or later, it becomes necessary - or at least very helpful - to build a more permanent base.
One of the great things about Don't Starve is the localized abundance of certain goods, which drive what kind of base you build. A base deep in the plains near a beefalo herd is great for farming, but you'll have to head farther and farther afield looking for lumber, stone, and gold. A grassland base may be able to subsist on honey, fresh meat, and wild produce, but lack the resources for farming. And if you live near pig-men... I'm not sure what you can do, actually. I've never lived near pigs.
But starving is far from the only risk in Don't Starve. In fact, I've only died from starving once, and that's because I didn't know the rules for sleeping bags yet. Almost all the time, I die not from lack of things to eat, but from being eaten myself. That's because there are much more dangerous things in the wide world. Spiders and tallbirds roam the wilderness, although both can be avoided. Strange magical creatures live in some areas, although you won't see them often. But worst of all are the hounds. After a few weeks on your own, you'll start to be attacked by hounds. And they're ferocious. A well defended base can hold them off for a while; a herd of beefalo will do even better, unless they're in heat, in which case they're even more dangerous than hounds. Hounds are the second most dangerous threat I've faced, after sheer carelessness and unnecessary risk taking.
Don't Starve is all about risk taking and tradeoffs, just like FTL, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and most other games that are either roguelikes, have permadeath, or both. Do you eat the monster meat that fills you up but hurts your health, or the mushroom that hurts your sanity (and when you start to go insane - wow)? Do you risk raiding that beehive despite the danger? Do you chase the Gobbler into the swamp (NO! Thus ended my best run so far)?
But the biggest tradeoff in Don't Starve is between building a safe and sustainable base and heading deep into the wilderness, looking for a way out of this world, if there is one. There's an Adventure Mode hidden there somewhere that I haven't found once in more than twenty hours of play. There's another way out too, that I also haven't found all of. Finding either requires long treks far from home, leaving you at the mercy of hounds, of foraging or the food you're carrying, and of winter. But who knows what you'll find along the way?
Don't Starve has its drawbacks. First of all, the art style is what I would call Tim Burton-esque. I don't know about you, but I consider this a massive drawback, and it almost turned me off the game entirely. But once you're actually playing, the art style works very well, although some of the more Goth-y unlockable characters are pretty tough.
Other problems in Don't Starve are less cosmetic. Even the smallest world size is truly massive. This is great when you discover a cool secret somewhere. But when you're trekking through a huge plain with nothing but grass and rabbits, it can get pretty boring. Different areas just aren't varied enough outside of the basic recurring biomes. Assuming the art style doesn't bother you, this is the biggest actual flaw in the game: there's not enough variety when you're away from your base.
The game also suffers from wild swings in difficulty. I have never starved. And I haven't figured out a reliable way to kill hounds if I'm already wounded, because recovering health is slow and painstaking. If I'm away from my base and more than a hound or two attacks, I have no idea what to do, except die. Things like that are frustrating.
But I've still played more than twenty hours in two days, so there's that. (UPDATED: twenty eight hours in three days. I have a headache)
Don't Starve is available now on Steam and (on sale) on Good Old Games for PC, Mac, and Linux.
