Don't Starve

• Uncompromising Survival & World Exploration:
  No instructions. No help. No hand holding. Start with nothing and craft, hunt, research, farm and fight to survive.
  
• Constant Updates:
  Join an active community that continues to help shape the game as new content is added!
  
• Dark and Whimsical Visuals:
  2D characters and odd creatures inhabiting a unique 3D world.
  
• Randomly Generated New Worlds:
  Want a new map? No problem! At any time you can generate a new living and breathing world that hates you and wants you to die.
  

• New character powers! Each of the unlockable characters has been retooled and given more dramatic special powers.
  
• Woodie, a whole new character! This lumberjack and his trusty axe Lucy are ready to level some forests. But beware his dark secret...
  
• Splumonkeys are now lurking in the caves. Don't let their curiosity get the better of you!
  
• A gemology tab has appeared!
  
• The red amulet, in addition to its previous resurrection duties, will now slowly convert hunger to health.
  
• A blue amulet can now be crafted, with many chilling side effects.
  
• Purple gems can be crafted into a powerful Telelocator staff. We are not responsible for missing beefalo.
  
• Pengulls will occasionally spew forth from the ocean in winter. Carefully observe their breeding habits!
  
• New mod configuration screen allows you to manage your mods with ease.
  

BloomingLilac, Sept. 2, 2013, in the D&E thread wrote:
I just finished playing Don't Starve. New content was added recently and I was anxious to get back to it. I can't believe this game was released late last year and the developers are still adding to it! Most AAA titles don't even have this much content, and when they do, the developers charge an arm and a leg for the DLC. All these updates are free for anyone who owns the game. I really like the game and Klei Entertainment (as if you couldn't tell). I've played around 300 hours and I still haven't discovered everything the game has to offer, mostly because I customize my games so that I can focus on building my base camp(s), etc. Granted, I still die, and most of the time, it's not from starving. Sometimes I die from clicking at the wrong time. For example, I'll click to gather a resource and accidentally "attack" a bee or a beefalo. If you have a weapon or a tool in your hand and you hit any creature in the game besides rabbits and birds, be prepared to defend yourself against a herd or a swarm. It's funny and irritating at the same time. I've learned that running away isn't such a bad thing. If you can't outrun them, you're history. Dying isn't even all that bad because the game is so much fun. It's a little disappointing when you've survived for, say, 200+ game days and you die because your game will not be saved. You can save and exit, but dying erases all your progress. I can't count the number of times I've started a new game.

There's so much going on in this game that I'm not sure my review would do it justice so I'll just point out some of its features.

-Crafting
-Resource gathering/management
-Spelunking (Yes, there are caves, but you have to find them.) :-)
-Building
-Cooking
-Exploring
-Magic items
-Open world

Don't Starve has everything I love in a game and more. There's an adventure mode, but you can't select it from the menu. You have to find Maxwell's Door before you can start. (Maxwell is the demon who kidnapped Wilson, the protagonist.) I've found it in a handful of my games. Surviving it is tough, though. I couldn't even survive the winters until I'd played the game for quite a while. I always start in the summer and prepare for winter.

If you've got arachnophobia, you probably won't like this game! You can customize your game to have less spiders, but I don't think you can play without them. I'll check, though.


The first time I saw a spider queen, I believe I screamed. I honestly thought my heart might stop. If someone had told me the spiders were scary, I wouldn't have believed them having only the artwork and trailers to go by. The art style is what kept me from buying the game sooner because it looked so cartoon-ish. The game does have its dark and eerie moments despite that. You have your health, hunger, and sanity to maintain.

The sounds, while comical, are very well done. I like the music, too. It can get pretty crazy when the pig men are fighting with the spiders and/or beefalo constantly. I don't build my camp as close to the spiders' nests as I used to, but I like to be a short walk away because I love making the hats and bug net out of the silk they drop. You can also use the silk to craft fishing poles. I forgot to list fishing in the features above. There are little ponds here and there that you can fish from if you can avoid the frogs. Silly face  Believe it or not, the frogs are extremely dangerous in this game. They flick their tongues at you and you'll take damage if you're not wearing a log suit, and even worse, you'll drop some of your precious inventory. (I seriously think I have OCD because I hate dropping my inventory and having to leave it on the ground. That's one thing that got me killed several times. I just HAD TO try and pick it up instead of running or attacking.) Suspect

If you're not sure about the game, I recommend picking it up while it's on sale because, as I mentioned, you can customize your game to adjust the difficulty. I don't like the hounds, for example, so I change the default setting to less. They attack every so often when you've killed a certain number of rabbits and birds, as doing that adds to your naughtiness factor. I don't know what the developers were thinking because you're told to avoid starving, yet they "punish" you for eating the innocent creatures in the game. You can always eat berries and carrots if you don't want to eat meat, though. Wink

I got the game for $8.99 and I consider that a steal. The normal price is extremely reasonable for the amount of content you'll get. Sometimes I'm happy to just set up a few bushes around my camp and manage my little farm. You can craft a pitchfork and a shovel to transplant the ground, grass, bushes, and saplings so you don't have to travel very far to restock. This helps immensely in winter. You can also catch bees to build hives for the winter and live off the honey. I just thought the game was fun until I built my first crock pot. You can mix four ingredients and come up with all sorts of recipes. This is the healthiest way to eat, but you don't even have to do everything I mentioned. The game is a blast. I can't think of a better way to describe it. I'll come back and let you all know if you can play without spiders and post anything I may have forgotten. Hope my comments were helpful.