After releasing arguably the best of stealth action game this year in Mark of The Ninja, Klei Entertainment is back at it with wilderness exploration survival game Don’t Starve. In Don’t Starve, you play one of several characters dropped in the wild for seemingly no reason. You have to survive off of the land and try to find your way home by chopping down trees, collecting flint, using grass as tinder, and building fires at night to fend off unwanted threats.
There’s also a deep leveling progression system that allows you to unlock new characters, research new items to craft, learn new types of magic, and acquire yet-to-be determined unlocks. Each time your character dies you lose all the items in your inventory, but you’re given XP in proportion to the amount of time you survived and retain any science, research, and magic you may have unlocked. You can then choose to retry or generate a brand-new world.
Graphically, the game is quite soothing to the eyes. Don’t Starve features smoothly drawn cartoon graphics and a distinct visual style akin to a Van Gogh painting. This game is most similar to Minecraft graphically. with low system requirements and minimal resource hogging. The only thing it lacks is the ability to create makeshift structures. This is a game solely designed around survival.
The wild is frightening.
The game is still in beta and yet has a surprising amount of features already implemented. There is even a feature in the games menu that tells you the expected length of the wait until the next release build. Don’t Starve is expected to be complete by March 2013. You can order now through Steam for instant access.