This week’s Monday Night Gaming: Don’t Starve Together
Publisher: Klei Entertainment
Game Type: Multiplayer via Don’t Starve Together, or single player via Don’t Starve
As much as I hate to admit it, our Minecraft server is pretty much dead. No one plays it anymore in our social circle (they’ve moved on to other games and so have we) and six worlds later, it is a long past memory of fun times.
When our friend, Elise, mentioned Don’t Starve Together, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. Sure it had the survival aspect and really cool art, but it lacked the ability to build castles and other crazy structures. My husband began playing the single version flavor, Don’t Starve. The single player version is a much more complete game as it has multiple worlds and creatures/events that don’t exist yet in multiplayer. In watching him play the single player version, I discovered there is plenty to do in this game. We joined up with our friend for a weekly run at Don’t Starve Together in addition to playing on our own server as often as time allows.
General Gameplay:
In Don’t Starve Together, you start out much like Minecraft, with nothing. Rather than punch a tree, you gather resources like twigs, grass, wood, flint, etc. to build tools, gather or hunt food, and begin your task of not starving. Unlike Minecraft, this game is a lot grittier and survivalist. The seasons are out to kill you. Winter wants to freeze you to death, spring wants to drown you (which can also freeze you and drive you insane), and summer wants to boil you. These things can be avoided through various items like winter wear made of fur, rain coats made of pig skins (among other things), and thermal stones, but getting some of these items is a challenge. Besides juggling the elements, you also have giants to worry about. Yes, giants. Big monsters and other non-agro creatures exist in the world as well. Some of the monsters are based on the season and their defeat makes a great group task. There are lots of items to craft, farming, hunting, and just general survival fun. The game is in beta at the moment, so they are continually adding to it.
Because the game’s on Steam, there is a heavy modding community for this game. Unlike Minecraft, the modding works. 🙂 (My husband’s even written a mod for recreating catcoons, which you can get here.)
How to Win/Lose: In single player, winning means surviving all five worlds, but in multiplayer, they haven’t implemented that yet. At this point, winning means surviving–however long that is. You lose by dying–be it through starvation, enemy, darkness, whatever.
What I Liked: Everything. Seriously
What I Didn’t Like: If a modder doesn’t update their mod when a game update happens, it’ll present all sorts of bugs. But that’s normal for most modded games.
Overall Impression/Rating:
10/10. Solid game. Now watch the trailer.
