Don’t Starve! The Tim Burton Roguelike
Once again I find myself returning to the roguelike well for a drink. This time, though, I’m visiting a game that I had originally passed on called KLEI’s Don’t Starve. The combination of the art style and the $14.99 price tag made me look elsewhere, even if it toted a survival roguelike gameplay. It took a friend to recommend it to me before I finally tried it, was it worth it?
Surreal and Edgy Style
My game reviews usually tackle gameplay first then the style second. With Don’t Starve I have to reverse the order because I was pretty dumb. I dismissed this game when I saw its Burton-esque Ghastlycrumb-Tinies inspired art work. I assumed that the game was targeted at the post-Hot-Topic crowd and therefore was a shallow experience that was somehow below me.
I was completely wrong.
Don’t Starve is a roguelike survival game that abandons your character in the middle of a monster filled wilderness without the slightest explanation. While other roguelikes lean on thin fantasy themes to justify their roguelike gameplay, Don’t Starve simply embraces the surreal. It’s very ridiculous that you’re in the wilderness with no reason, no help, and no hope, but let’s have some fun anyway! The game’s dark, self-aware sense of humor and, admittedly, Burton-esque visuals lend the game charm and confidence.
To keep the survival tension high Don’t Starve doesn’t pause when you fiddle with your inventory or select a new tool to build. While a solid design choice, this opens up the possibility for difficulty and failure due to to the interface if it’s confusing or cumbersome. Thankfully, the UI in Don’t Starve is nearly perfect. While you will occasionally misclick or fumble through its menus it does a splendid job communicating what you can build, when you can build it, and all of the resources you have on hand at the time. The game is also filled with clear and recognizable sounds that signal when you’ve gathered the resources necessary to build something. Thanks to a polished interface playing the game is easy.
Which is good, because dying is easier.
Sepia Survival
The goal of Don’t Starve is clear: survival. You have three meters: satiation, health, and sanity. If any of these meters hit zero, you fail at surviving and have to try again from the beginning. The large randomly generated 2d world filled with things for you to harvest. The harvested components turn into crafting tools and structures, allowing you to climb up ever ascending tiers of crafts. Collecting sticks and flint leads to a pickax. A pickax leads to breaking open boulders for rocks and gold. Gold leads to a Science Machine that allows you to refine components, like turning grass into rope. And so on and so on, you continue to unlock upgrades to gear and surreal developments like the Meat Effigy (made from meat and beard hair). It’s the same rewarding crafting present in Minecraft with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor.
The scope of the game is truly overwhelming. The moment that you feel like you have your shit under control, the game t
hrows another wrench in the works. For example, in my last game, I cut down too many trees so an ent-like Tree Guardian spawned. The game specifically foils your attempts to survive, ramping up the game at every meaningful milestone that you achieve. It has the same brutal learning-curve of other roguelikes without being too random or too unforgiving. It graciously allows you to feel accomplished before springing another game-ending challenge on you.
To say that the game has lots of content is an understatement. Don’t Starve, like most roguelikes, is filled with many secrets and subsystems that the player has to discover on their own. The player can gain Naughtiness by killing helpless (but component filled!) animals, causing a vigilante Krampus to appear to take vengeance. Creatures made of shadow are visible in the map, harmless until you go crazy enough for you to believe they’re capable of killing you. There is no end to the wondrous and murderous sights you’ll see in the game. I’ve died innumerable times but, each time, it was to something new, exciting, and probably hilarious.
Conclusion
After playing so many free roguelike games, it’s a joy when one provides a truly unique experience. Don’t Starve successfully mixes a surreal vibe with brutal survival. Is it worth $14.99 on Steam? I originally didn’t think so, it’s a price point that the game’s visuals fail to sell me on. But the gameplay, once you get your hands on it, make the $15 price tag an easily justifyable expense. I just wish this game had a demo so I could more easily convince my friends to play it!
If you’re a fan of clever roguelikes and enjoy crafting, Don’t Starve will push all of your buttons. Go get it.
