Don't Starve PS4/PC review

[Lebowski]

Wasn't sure about this at first its a wilderness survival game where the idea is to gather resources to keep you alive in the wilderness. It gives you no tutorials just dumps you in the middle of nowhere and tasks you with surviving, its a top down affair and is more about exploration and survival than building houses and stuff like mine-craft and its ilk. if you want to go in completely blind don't read on but be warned the game is very unforgiving in killing you and it will take you a few attempts to work out the basics.

Attempt one

Day One
Wandered around trying to get my bearings collected a bit of food but didn't make it through the night, as it got dark and i didn't have any wood to make a fire, i frantically tried to find some flint to make an axe but it quickly got to dark to see and something got me.

Attempt two

Day One
My first order of business was gathering flint and sticks to make an axe, i chopped down a few trees and had enough wood to make a campfire i even managed to build a trap and bait it with a carrot and catch and cook a rabbit to keep the hunger at bay. I could see things hiding in the darkness so stayed close to the campfire until the morning,

Day Two
I explored my little island a bit more found lots more resources and crafted a pickaxe to mine some stone, caught a few more rabbits and stumbled upon a nest of giant spiders. I managed to kill one and collect some spider web but now my life was low and i was hungry. With the stone i made a fire-pit and cooked some rabbits, the fire pit turned out to be more efficient than last nights campfire and required less logs to keep it burning through the night.

Day Three
i found some bees and tried to get some honey this ended up with me being stung so i legged it back to my camp and thankfully the bees left me alone after a bit, i collected some more wood, some seeds and berries and caught a few more rabbits to keep the hunger at bay, made a torch this evening so i could wander from my camp, but the night was full of spiders so i returned to camp to cook some stuff and wait the night out.

Day Four
Was not a good day, setting fire to trees with my torch angered some bats and i had to fight them off with an axe they bit me a few times and i was low on health when i ran into a graveyard, handily someone had left a shovel nearby and my guy seemed to think there would be cool stuff in the graves, so i did a bit of digging and found some gems, I was attacked by a ghost but managed to scare the ghost off by swinging my pickaxe at it, but not without causing my little guys physical and mental health to dwindle to virtually nothing, i returned to camp and tried eating but this did little to aid my mental state, it was at this point that dark shadows started to appear on the edge of my vision these shadows got more and more clear eventually attacking and killing me, i can only asume my guy went mad though fatigue and lack of sleep, i will try again this evening.

So that's my brief evenings play with don't starve the game seems very unforgiving, your constantly fighting to keep your hunger level you health and your mental state up i think on my next play-though, i need to create myself a bed so if my mental state drops again i can rest. its an interesting game and its quite addictive, in a "lets see how long i can keep going and what i can discover on my next go" kind of way, I'm slowly getting to grips with how to survive and i reckon i might last more than four days on my next go. great fun and for once a bit of a challenge too.

[VR46]

Thanks for the impressions, sounds good. I didn't get around to trying this last night, how long does each day last in real time? does it save at the end of every day or do you start a fresh game everytime you play?

[Lebowski]

you can save it at any point but its a save and quit so its not like you can roll back to an earlier save, if you die your back to square one but with a bit more of an idea on how to survive. In addition each day you get XP which builds constantly and is persistent even after death this eventually unlocks more characters to play as.

Each day lasts about 8 minutes, the completely dark part for the day only lasts about one minutes and requires a campfire or a torch or you will die, twilight lasts two minutes. and the light part of the day lasts about 5 minutes.

[VR46]

Thank you, most helpful. Looking at the trophies, seems there are about eight unlockable characters.

[kryss]

Meant to try this when it was released but never quite found the time.
Will have a play later hopefully.

[djtickle]

I did the normal trick with this, added it to my account and left it so that I might come back to it at some point. But reading these impressions it sounds fantastic and I'm guessing it will be remote play friendly too. Will be checking it out tonight.

[Lebowski]

just been watching this on my lunch pretty good introduction from the good old yogcast to the basic concepts, seems i went mad because i didn't pick flowers lol

[ETC]

Remember to plant butterflies, it regrows flowers as they will run out

[ETC]

Got to day 6, then got done in by a beefalo figured out building the science machine is very important

[Lebowski]

So started this up early evening again and i got a quite a bit further i built the science machine, a little farm and a firepit, and set up quite a cool little camp near the rabbits. I had a good thing going for a while, laying a trap near a rabbit hole and chasing the rabbits towards them was a great way to catch them but left very little time for exploring or doing other things.

I decided to explore a bit further afield and found a spider nest, whacking it wasn't the best thing to do as i was attacked by four spiders i hacked them to death with my pick axe and got myself some spider silk, on the way back to camp i found carrots berries, some ponds with frogs, and i even managed to corner a turkey and slaughter it.

For the first time in days things where looking up, turkey carrots, berries, and frogs legs where keeping my hunger at bay and i had excess food. I had time to mess with my science machine the first thing i made was a fishing rod so that i could return to the pond i found to fish.

It was at this point lighting struck the trees surrounding my base because they where so densely planted, a pretty major forest fire started burning up loads of my things, when morning came my camp looked very bleak so i chopped the trees down gaining charcoal and used my pine cones to plant some more trees.

Then in the night a growling started and my little guy got spooked when day arrived i was attacked by wolves i managed to kill them both but it took me the best part of a day and again my hunger was critical and the few bits of food i had didn't help much. I set out to the pond to fish and catch some frogs, i arrived at the pond whacked a frog with a spear which immediately attacked me in a large groups killing me pretty much instantly.

I think my mistake was not looking for berries and carrots when my health and hunger where super low, so day 14 Killed by frog, will try again tomorrow but wow this game is harsh. death is a real penalty which makes the whole thing a lot more tense, its a shame i can't keep the area Ive explored as i actually felt like i was getting somewhere with this map and had a lot of stuff earmarked to check out later, but i suppose it all adds to the atmosphere and tension of the game loving it and even though the frogs killed me it was my fault for not being careful, one reckless action in this can pretty much loose you an evenings worth of play.

[VR46]

Yes harsh indeed, I got to day 3 on my first go after some of the tips thanks, didn't grow on me at first but now can't wait for another go. Not sure I can be putting in (and writing off) almost two hour stints to get to day 14 and the like though.
Enjoying your shared experiences though.

[kryss]

I played stupid to start and attacked a bee's nest on play 1, killed.
Play 2 I've gotten to day 4 or 5 without any major challenge. I'm planting trees after cutting them down, harvesting berries when I see them and always setting up a campfire at the start of the evening. It just started raining as I saved+quit so I wonder what will happen when I go back to it in the morning.

[Mr M0by]

Made it to Day 11 and was feeling pretty comfortable when I decided to investigate a sinkhole. Didn't last more than 60 seconds in the cave before I was taken apart by Spiders. Having activated a 'touchstone' earlier, I re-spawned minus my possessions and immediately had two hounds after me. Man, do they not give up. Now with little health and no supplies it was hard to keep away from the hounds whilst gathering the supplies I needed for the night. Eventually I managed to shake them off and stumbled into a battle of Pig Men and frogs. This proved to be pretty fortuitous as I poached all the frog tails, more than enough to keep me going for a few days. Picked up a spear too and enough flowers to make a garland and raise my sanity levels. Pretty insane then of me, on Day 13 imbued with confidence to get all confrontational with the spider colonies I came across the next day. Warrior spiders bite back quicker than you can attack with the spear I found to my cost.

[djtickle]

I've fallen out with this, I found maxwells door to enter adventure mode and twice now after over a hours play it's dumped me back to the dash. Funny that the error page is clearly from the PC version as it has buttons to go to the fourm. Guess I'll start a new save and go back to adventure mode hopefully after a fix.

[Lebowski]

Not had crashes so far but wow that would be a killer, got quite a bit further this time, my top tips would be set up camp near grass lands and make yourself about ten baskets to catch rabbits, this way you can go off and explore and will have tons of food when you come back also make yourself a few drying rack as soon as you can and a crock pot, dried meat gives back a lot of health and lasts longer too and crock pots mean you can make food that gives you more health and improves sanity too

If your going to fight spiders or other things make sure you have a wood suit as this stops you getting hurt as much, also when wolves attack get to the grass land as they will chase the rabbits and leave you be, making it easier to kill them.

if you want to make things easier for yourself you can tailor the game to how you like and turn off things in the options i was sick of the wolves so i tuned them off to make my game a bit more explorer friendly i also made the days longer too. be carefull if your chopping wood at dusk as you can attract that tree monster thing that is a bastard to kill.