Game Thrall: Don’t Starve Edition

I’m currently sitting here at a coffee shop with Sam, and I realized I hadn’t put up my post for this week.  As I tried to think about what I should talk about, I found that I could only think about one thing: Don’t Starve, the indie game I’ve been playing this week. I don’t know why this game sucked me in so much, especially when I hated similar games like Minecraft and Terreria. You might have heard me talk about about Don’t Starve on the podcast this week, but I’m going to take it a few steps further for this post.

Overview

Don’t Starve is a rogue-like, survival game that entails collecting resources and fortifying defenses and such against starvation, animals, creatures, and other mythical beasts that live in the forest. In the opening scene, you wake up in the forest, hungry and confused. You have a hunger meter, a sanity meter, and a life meter. A stranger tells you that you better find some food before nightfall (and that’s not the only thing you have to find before nightfall in order to survive the game).

Strategy

For those playing this wonderful game, here are a few strategy tips I’ve created along the way. But honestly, the fun of this game is figuring out your own strategy and exploring the world (which is randomly generated each time you start a new game). So these are general tips for newbies, but feel free to not take this too much to heart.

1. Manure

Manure is the key to surviving in this game long term. If you wake up in a forest and walk in all directions without finding manure, you should restart. If you don’t have manure within a 3-4 day walk from your starting position, you will likely not make it. With manure you can move bushes and grass and replant them by your homebase. You can also make gardens to grow vegetables from seeds.

2. Cook everything

I was just eating straight up berries and seeds at first. But if you cook everything you catch or collect, the food will restore both your stomach fullness and your life. So always cook everything you eat!

3. Only use stone walls

Don’t waste your time with hay and wood walls. They will catch on fire and provide little protection in the meantime. If you make a nice horseshoe out of stone walls, you can trap the demon dogs to give yourself time to find food or get your health back up. The demon dogs are distracted by raw meat on the ground, so if you kill one of them, it will give you a few extra seconds to get away.

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 11.55.45 AM4. Make the log suit and the backpack, but…

You can’t wear the log suit and carry the backpack at the same time. What you should do is keep one back at your camp and wear/bring the other with you depending on your current goal. If you’re going to collect manure and stone, then bring your backpack. If you’re going to collect silk, wear your log suit and make sure you have enough room in your basic inventory to fill up.

Meta

I keep thinking about why this game has trapped me, and I honestly can’t articulate why I find it so engaging. It does have features I find appealing across my favorite games of all time: resource management, building a home base, and accumulating/hording things. But it also has elements that I absolutely hate: its roguelike, there are monsters and things that are almost impossible to beat (meaning that things you accumulate will likely be for naught in the end, because there are some beasts you just can’t beat), and there is no guide or even indication of how to do things. It took me a week to realize you could cook things besides rabbit. I still don’t really know what to do when the demon dog comes. I just have to hope I’m at full health and stand there and stab it while it bites me.

The characters in the game are interesting, though problematic in some ways. As you progress through the game, you unlock new characters, each with their own quirks. For example, one character is a pyromanic. So as a plus, she has her own lighter, but she also randomly lights stuff on fire when you don’t want her to. Or there is a character that is not afraid of the dark (which helps with sanity), but she is haunted by a dead twin. I wish you got characters that were actually stronger, rather than just weirder, but it’s still pretty cool to unlock new toons.

So, while this isn’t a critical analysis, it’s the kind of stuff that has been on my mind all week. I’d love to hear from any others who have played Don’t Starve, especially those who also liked Minecraft or Terreria. Why are these games different? Or are they not different and I’m just crazy?