Don't Starve

(Sorry this is late. I forgot what the prompt is for this week's post)

From the most superficial standpoint, Don't Starve is 2D Minecraft, survival only, fashioned after Tim Burton macabre, yet charming style. Every world is generated, unique to its design. You can even customize the number of enemies, amount of food, and adjust the difficulty. Your character, the default being Wilson, wakes up in a forest and has to collect materials, fashion himself tools, find himself food in order to make it through the night. You have three status bars you have to keep track of: health, hunger, and sanity.

As you explore the land, which has different biomes where you can find different materials and mobs, you find these strange objects called Things. These Things have to be collected in order to advance to the next stage of the game, Adventure Mode. Don't Starve gives you the option to end your survival world, in ways many simulator games such as Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing don't. In games like these, you start out with nothing, and then you acquire things in order to build a town or establish yourself with good and money. However, in Don't Starve, you slowly learn crafting recipes that will help you survive more easily. Some items are difficult to find but have great benefits to them. For example, the winter variant of the Koelefant can be killed for its trunk, which will make the best clothing article that protects against freezing during the winter. However, Koelefants are difficult to hunt and kill as it is. Winter, which lowers your health the longer you are from a heat source, makes the challenge all the more difficult.

As you progress, you seek better and better items. The team behind Don't Starve, Klei Entertainment, is constantly updating the game with new features. Only recently, they added cave systems to the game. The caves are difficult. It is eternally dark so you have to bring a light source with you. Your sanity slowly decreases the longer you explore and there are more enemies than not. You want to explore the caves because it's a challenge and because there are materials, exclusive to the caves, that yield high benefits to your character.

There are also a number of characters you can choose from. Each character has perks and skills that can help or hinder your progress in the game. Wilson, the protagonist of the game, has the ability to grow a fine beard. While the beard provides warmth and is especially useful during the winter, it also drains sanity. Wes, a mime, is completely useless. He has lower health, lower sanity, doesn't do as much damage, and has faster draining hunger. You can only unlock this character by completing Adventure mode and choosing him as an option. Klei Entertainment recently added Woodie, a lumberjack who can turn into a beaver.

The constant updates and additions to Don't Starve adds to its re-playability. You can regenerate worlds to explore and challenge yourself to playing different characters. There is always something new you want to experience which is part of what makes Don't Starve a fun game.

-Zixing Guo