Don't Starve Review

Review

January 20th, 2014, By Maya Mayfield

We all love a good walk or jog down natures path. The gentle breeze against your face. The rejuvenating feeling of  being amongst natures wildlife. The sound of chirping birds in the trees, or the squirrels and deer that quickly run away at the sight of your presence. The majority of us enjoy our time with nature because we know that once we've  had enough, we can pack our camping gear and make our way back to the comfort and safety of our homes. Well what if you suddenly found yourself lost in natures wilderness, with no map, compass, food, water or shelter? How would you survive? What would you do to keep your self safe, warm and fed as day turns to night?  This is how we find a Scientist by the name of Wilson at the opening cutscene of Don't Starve.

Wilson is a gentleman scientist and we first see him attempting to create some sort of scientific formula at the start of the game, but after messing it up for what would appear to be the hundredth time, he flops down on his recliner in defeat. Suddenly a bizarre voice is heard from the radio beside him offering Wilson the chance to gain the knowledge to his failed potion.
Jumping at the opportunity Wilson is gifted with new discovered intellect compelling him to design a strange machine with a secret purpose.  When Wilson completes his work, the mysterious voice tells him to switch it on and as he does, Wilson suddenly realizes he has made an awful mistake. Suddenly there is a flash of  lighting bolt, as the sky turns eerie, black. Wilson is grabbed by shadowy hands coming from the wooden panels of his home, dragging him against his will to the mysterious unknown.

Wilson awakens shocked from his terrible ordeal in a bizarre and unfamiliar territory, it is here we see the face of the tyrant responsible for bring him to this place. Encouraged with the task of  searching for supplies the villain disappears, thus your journey and fight for survival begins.
Don't Starve is a top down perspective game and your aim is to gather tons of various items for the ultimate purpose of surviving in this unknown place. You have to  hunt wild animals, combining different foods to create better meals that can help boost your strength and health. You have to build and maintain a garden to safely store your gathered rations. Protect your body by putting on armor, survive the harsh cold winter seasons by wearing warm clothes  and stay out of the darkness by creating fire to avoid hallucinations that can drain your sanity meter.

There are loads to do in Don't Starve that will keep you relatively busy like making new friends with weird creatures of the land, exploring peculiar underground caves and of course battling dangerous enemies along the way. A really nice feature in Don't Starve is the ability to unlock several new characters as you level up, which certainly adds to the titles repayable qualities.   Each character you unlock also has their pros and cons when considering their survival in the wild. For example Wilson can grow his beard during the winter, which adds to keeping him insulated and warm. He has no major strengths or weakness, but Wendy another character you come to discover later on is not affected by the darkness like Wilson. She can conjure up the ghost of her dead sister to fight of foes, but doing so causes her to lose a lot of sanity stats which makes her weak for longer periods of time to fight back monsters. There are more to discover so we won't ruin it for you by saying anymore on that.

Although Don't Starve isn't the easiest of games to play, developers Klei Entertainment does however allow for adjustments to the games settings to suit your skill level. For example you could set what types of  foods are in normal and limited quantities or how many enemies appear on screen at once. Changing this settings can offset the way the game plays making it easier or harder depending entirely on how you want to play it. Our experience taught us  to not tamper with these settings right away at least until you familiarize yourself with Don't Starve's mechanics, and survival technics.
As mentioned earlier Don't Starve is not the easiest game to master, and the difficult learning curve could lead some to deep frustrations as you find yourself losing everything you have earned once you die. The only comfort you can at least take from that is to approach the same scenario differently the next time it presents itself. Each death spawns you back into a random generated world for you to start again, and it will really take the most determined and devoted amongst you to see this challenge to the end.

The Tim Burton inspired artistic style of Don't Starve looks great, with various objects and characters designed with a dark, creepy, yet appealing stylized theme. Everything in Don't Starve looks like it was made out of 2 dimensional paper cut-outs, but the top down view allows you to maneuver around the environment in a 3 dimensional way, which adds to the titles visual appeal, and originality.
The Music score and sound effects also contribute greatly to the uneasy tense experience of being in a weird and strange world. This is contrasted beautifully by the peaceful sound effects of the wind blowing against the trees, or the fire crackling and ocean sway. The upbeat music production inspired by the film noir era is both entertaining and strange, the same can be said of characters voices during dialogue scenes as well.

Overall

Don't Starve is  definitely a fun solid game to play, once you get past the learning curve. The games visuals look great, blending  well with its entertaining soundtrack. It may just be one of the most difficult and frustrating games to play, but  the satisfaction in completing it means you are amongst the ranks of  those  who didn't just give up and quit at the first second or even third hurdle.

Score 4/5