I tumbled into a cave, isolated from my meticulously tended camp, and inched forward unprepared into the blackness. The seasons changed for the first time, and suddenly my time-tested strategies fell apart. It meant my first forays into the game felt like genuine exploration, full of unexpected moments that upended what I thought I knew. Your only real goal, as you quickly discern, is to survive by managing three straightforward meters for your hunger, health, and sanity.Īs someone who completely missed out on the PC release last April, I knew almost nothing of Don’t Starve, and I’m fortunate for that ignorance. You spot animals, then monsters, then occult structures and artifacts that hint at something sinister beneath the surface. As you start to gather resources, you discover a robust crafting system that opens up intuitive and equally deep ways to interact with the environment. You’re dropped into a patch of randomly generated wilderness with no explanation or tutorial beyond a few onscreen button prompts inviting you to investigate further. It’s trying hard, yes, but it’s succeeding.īut the bigger accomplishment, by far, is the way the game’s world continuously unfolds itself to you. There’s all the dark quirk of a teenage goth’s notebook scrawls with none of the desperation. Instead of voices, the pencil-scratch characters speak with untuned instruments, like adults in a Peanuts cartoon. Creatures are adorable and creepy in equal measure, and frequently both at the same time. Its aesthetics are breezily macabre, a sort of Edward Gorey for the Hot Topic generation.

Nomenclature aside, though, there’s a lot to love about Don’t Starve. Or Don’t Pick That Flower Because It’s Actually a Giant Worm That Will Kill You in One Hit. Or Don’t Try to Kill a Ghost With a Spear, You Idiot. Or Don’t Build Your Camp Next to a Spider Nest. No, in my experience, it would’ve been much more accurate to call the game Don’t Attack Bees. I’m starting to suspect that being well fed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, I’ve died plenty-more often and more embarrassingly than I’m willing to recount in full-but every single time I’ve been frozen or bitten or bludgeoned into the afterlife, it’s been on a full stomach.

After putting more than a dozen hours into Klei’s spooky survival roguelike, not once have I succumbed to starvation. I’m officially spearheading a petition to rename Don’t Starve.

Don t starve website