Review: Don't Starve (PS4)

Don’t Starve somehow eluded me when it was released on PC last year, but thanks to it being delivered for free to PS4’s PlayStation Plus subscribers, I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to experience supposedly one of 2013’s finest indie games at the bargain price of $0.00.

Being a permadeath roguelike, Don’t Starve takes the whole “survival” concept more literally than the vast majority of its peers. There is no other objective in the game other than to not succumb to your deadly surroundings, and in a world where almost everything around you wants you to die, that is no simple task. To avoid the Grim Reaper’s touch you’re tasked with managing protagonist Wilson’s Hunger, Health and Sanity meters. which can all be achieved by mining the land around you for resources. Chop down trees and gather flint to create a fire, collect flowers to adorn your head with a pretty garland to boost your Sanity and build yourself a pickaxe in order to break apart boulders and gather precious gold. It all sounds basic enough in theory, but carrying out your daily tasks before the sun sets and the world’s ghoulish creatures rise proves to be an arduous, and often frustrating, experience.

Developed by Klei Entertainment, the team behind the equally challenging N+ and Mark of the Ninja, Don’t Starve refuses to hold your hand in its opening moments, but anyone familiar with Minecraft will be able to grasp its mechanics swiftly, though the comparisons with its crafting contemporary end there. Minecraft was about building architectural masterpieces, while Don’t Starve doesn’t afford you the time or tools to do anything of the sort in its world. You can build a “home” for Wilson, though it will be a practical one designed for the sole purpose of keeping him safe from harm. There are no multistory mansions made out of diamond blocks in Don’t Starve, just a few walls keeping your character away from the nightmarish creatures that roam the wilderness at night.

Considering how much of a prevalent danger these creatures are, though, very rarely will you encounter them. Setting up a fire at night ensures that they do not venture close enough to harm you, while the oversized spiders, boars and other assorted monstrosities that skulk around the world during the daytime are easily avoidable, and tend to cross paths with you relatively infrequently. This means the majority of your time will be spent simply wandering around and picking stuff up, which inevitably grows tiresome.

However, the boredom that punctuates Don’t Starve is outweighed by its hugely addictive gameplay, which pushes you to continue playing by revealing more and more of itself at every other turn. With almost every playthrough I discovered something new about the game, knowledge that I would then take with me after I inevitably died. Don’t Starve‘s lore is so expansive, though, that I am sure there is much that I have yet to learn, and considering that the PS4 port of the game includes all of the content from its many PC updates, there’s hours upon hours worth of content here, and a multitude of different characters to unlock that each bring with them unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

The real highlight of the game, though, is its gorgeous hand-drawn visuals. Seemingly lifted out of the mind of a pre-Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton, Don’t Starve‘s gothic artwork gives it the look of a children’s pop-up book, albeit one which is intended to give them terrifying nightmares of giant tree monsters and anthropomorphized pig-men. Despite being a grown man I still felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention when the flame on my log fire started to dwindle, and a sea of evil, white eyes loomed closer and closer towards me in the blackness of the night.

At its best, Don’t Starve is a game which makes you feel like a true survivor, trapped in the wilderness, alone, desperately foraging for food whilst avoiding the many dangers spawned by a particularly unforgiving Mother Nature. While it may often veer into tedium, I found myself becoming too sucked into its darkly charming world and addictive gameplay to find this tedium off-putting. All PlayStation Plus subscribers should download Don’t Starve immediately.