Don't Starve

I have heard literally nothing about this work-in-progress game from Klei Entertainment, but it looks potentially amazing:

Supposedly it’s a survival sim, except in a strange almost Gorey-esque world. Also it seems very proud of not having any documentation.

The demo was promising (where did I play that?). Kind of a super-limited Minecraft.

Ah, downloaded it through Chrome from the Google Store.

I’ve had my eye on this. I love the whole “survive and create” genre that seems to be establishing itself, and this kind of game will devour my gaming time more than any other.

I gave a beta version of this a whirl, and it seemed competent but pretty lackluster in every regard. It was a reminder of why I don’t play betas. I only played about 15 minutes, so I’m pretty unwilling to pass any judgments on it quite yet.

I had been eyeing this one on Steam, but my friend gifted it to me before I got around to buying it. Apparently it’s buy 1 get 1 free and you can gift that second copy to who you want.

Played a few games so far, and it lives up to it’s name! First game I starved to death on the second day, second game I was eaten by something in the darkness when I decided to see what happens when you walk away from your campfire at night, and the third game I starved to death on the third day. Progress!

The gameplay seems interesting so far. Basically once you wake up you can explore the map (which is random each game) and harvest various resources. Gathering twigs and flint will let you make an axe, pick, or a shovel and those lead to better materials: wood, stone, & gold among others. Once you make a pick and can mine a bit that also gives you the materials to make a science machine that you can put resources in and get research points in return that can be used to unlock new technology.

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten in a single game so far. My main problem is coming up with a reliable source of enough food to get by. The first source of food you have are berries & carrots around the map, but I’ve found out the hard way these are better saved to be used as bait in the first traps you get. Those are best built next to rabbit holes and baited with berries or carrots to try to trap a bunny. Unfortunately I haven’t perfected how to do that on a large enough scale yet to really feed myself.

There also seems to be some sort of level/reward system where the longer you survive in a game, more experience is added to your profile, and that can unlock new characters to play.

At any rate it seems like a clever, well thought out game so far and for the price it gets my thumbs up.

Random tips:

  • Shovels can be used to dig up and relocate grass stumps, berry bushes, etc to better locations
  • The pig people are friendly. They can be bribed with food to work for you and will also protect you from spiders if you build your camp near them
  • The single most important thing in the very beginning is getting some flint and a few logs in order to build a fire the first night.
  • Don’t wander into the dark without light!
  • Certain terrain types seem to have different resources, sometimes drastically different.
  • Careful of swamps early on… they are home to tentacle creatures that don’t like gentleman scientists.

It looks and sounds like it was inspired by UnrealWorld. Are the two games as similiar as they appear? I’ve always wanted to get into UnrealWorld but I usually end up too frustraited with the UI to get very far.

I’ve never played Unreal World, but looking at the website for it, I’d say this is much less a simulation than it looks like. Don’t Starve is much more abstract in it’s mechanics than realistic. They really don’t look at all related except for both touching on survival as a main theme.

Yeah UnReal world is much more of a simulation than this. Like Dredmor is to Crawl. I’ve tried it out a bit and it seems like it has some of the basics in but its just not fun yet. I don’t know if it will be fun but it looks to have promise. Seems like all that’s in is basic crafting, which oddly includes 2 magic spells.

So what you do is you get food to survive, like say carrots and berries. You can eat them or use the carrot to bait a trap to catch a rabbit. You can then eat the rabbit meat or roast it over a fire. You don’t craft… crafts, just toss the meat on the fire. No skinning the rabbit and using its fur. No complicated traps, no trap lines. You get enough wood to build a fire to last through the night. And then you build a research machine, to get research points you toss crafted items into it which will in turn give you an arbitrary amount of research points. You case use those points to learn how to make say a butterfly net, a golden axe to replace your current axe, or armor made from strapping logs to yourself.

Maybe it was just where I was looking but the world seemed really small. Start on the beach, walk in the other direction and in under a minute I’m at the other beach. No swimming, no rafts, no boats.

I’m going to keep my eye on it.

So Don’t Starve is turning into a pretty good game. My previous best survival was nine days, but because research carries over between lives, each time I’m able to get a slightly better start and in this game I’m now edging on three weeks.

I also appear to have gained a pet, as every night when I light the fires he wanders up to sleep near it - been doing it for a week now.

I’ve named him Mr. Poopsmith, as he’s keeping my three plot vegetable farm fertilised all on his own. I also have planted four berry bushes just above my camp and the rabbit hole provides some cooked meat every couple of days.

I also found some Tallbirds, so if I can get in without them noticing,then I can have eggs for breakfast.

To the north of me is an island that’s littered with gold nuggets, but absolutely crawling with huge spiders. So it’s a sort of a good news / bad news thing. I’m gathering pine cones, so I can go up there and burn those eight-legged mothers out.

I really like the way the game makes me plan what I’m going to do “today.” I spend the night cowering by the fire, and then know when the sun comes up if I need to go get lumber, or hunt for rabbits, or if I can spend the day exploring.

I feel pretty stable where I am now, but I need to find some more rare stuff, so I can keep researching new tech, so I’ll be striking out soon. I really need to find another Beefallo herd, so I can just pick up my camp and move it to them and keep the farming going. I’d hate to run out of aubergines and have to eat Mr. Poopsmith.

That is disturbingly cute. He’s probably a lot more useful alive after the recent changes that made it more difficult to stockpile berry bushes. There’s no such thing as a were beefalo, right?

I’m really enjoying the game. The art style turned me off at first, but I bought it after seeing someone else play it. The animation and audio cues are really well done.

I just unlocked the character in your screenshots. Looking forward to trying her next game. Last game ended horribly for the bearded gentleman, although the method of death was hilarious. So far, that’s 2 deaths to harmless-looking things that suddenly went on murderous rampages.

Well, the good news is I didn’t starve.

The bad news is a tree came to life, wandered through my cooking area setting itself on fire and then punched my face off.

I’m sorry Mr. Poopsmith!

Dammit.

You guys have convinced me to checkout the game a little bit more, and it is more enjoyable than I thought. I’m not sure it has the depth yet that will keep me playing for as long as UnReal world did but they put out updates, something UnReal world doesn’t really seem to be doing.

I really like the idea and look of this but have a big backlog. Is it already worth $12?

How different is each playthrough? Is it one of those where you’re exploring the systems in play as well as the map, and does that limit replayability?

Arrendek, I’ll gift you my free copy. Add me on steam, Morberis is the name.

OK… I’m sold… have to try this…

Wow, awesome! I went ahead and added you. My display name is Cornflakes, account name arrendek.

edit: Thanks Morberis for the copy.

I was trying to not spend anymore on games until the xmas sale, but you guys are making this game sound really cool. I’ve been craving a good survival type game lately.

As previously asked, is this worth a $12 purchase right now, or is it better to wait until it is further along in development?

So…very…tempted…

Daaaamn tentacles are strong. I thought I had it going on, wood armor, spear, took down another tentacle but oooh he got me. Also if you have a spear the pig village is a cinch and will supply you with tons of high quality food. However it looks like I have no pictures, I hit the F12 button tons but it appears that none were taken? Too bad, I had a few good ones.

Also graves… ooooh I loves me some graves. Tall birds are fun too.

Edit: Actually I cant seem to get the steam interface working with this game at all. Odd.