Don’t Starve is a single player survival game created by KLEI Entertainment. The game is set in a dark and magical world in which the player has to scour the world in search of resources to survive. There are multiple characters to play as and each character has its own unique perks that affect the way you play Don’t Starve. The game has two DLCs which are Reign of Giants (RoG) and Shipwrecked. There is also a stand alone game called Don’t Starve Together for multiplayer.

Game Website: https://www.kleientertainment.com/games/dont-starve

Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6llTfYmI90

Lens of elemental tetrad

Aesthetics

Don’t Starve boasts a dark theme. The art styles and the sound effects alone help to depict the impression of a direness of the situation and the need to survive. The colors and sound in the game progress with the changes in environment and actions done in the game.  These help me as the player to realize and immerse into the situation I was in. The results in intuitive gameplay.

Technology

The game is available on console, PC and mobile. The game runs in a pseudo 3D environment with mostly 2D assets. Having these relatively GPU light visuals allows the game to be flexible enough to be played on all platforms. There are also not much buttons used in the game as it is possible to play the game on PC with just one hand either on the mouse or keyboard.

Mechanics

The character’s status is represented by several meters which are health, hunger and sanity. These meters will fluctuate depending on the environment, weather or actions taken. The player has to search the map to look for resources to craft and improve his/her survival rates. The game focuses a lot on exploration as each map is randomly generated and important resources are scattered throughout the whole world. Exploring and combat will be necessary in order to survive the game. This will provide the player with rarer resource to make higher tier equipment, and the cycle continues.

Story

The game has a story mode called Adventure Mode that can be activated through the sandbox mode. The player has to search for a structure called Maxwell’s Door in sandbox mode to start the story. The story is simple yet interesting and closes the loop on how and why the world of Don’t Starve came about in the first place. The game still has its main focus on survival than the story.

Overall

I feel that the four elements complement each other to provide an immersive and dark survival game.

Lens of Visible Progress

The game has an element in base building and tech tree. As the player progresses on, the base will grow larger and the player will be able to craft more things from different crafting stations. The number of days survived is also clearly shown to the user in the UI to show how far the player has progressed. These feedbacks tell the player clearly that he/she is getting stronger and more well equipped to deal with anything the game can throw at him/her. The progress indicators in the game is broken down into small bite-sized pieces. Content that is slowly released into the world as the player progresses are also indicators of progress.

Lens of curiosity

The game keeps the player curious. Many equipment and structures are given weird names and vague descriptions that suit the theme but does not provide information about the item. This makes the player wondering, leading them to craft it themselves. Some clues are given in small pieces to lead the player on.

In this example, I was investigating ‘Suspicious dirt piles’ which revealed animal tracks for me to follow. It led me to a source of food. It is also possible to find a mini-boss at the end of the trail sometimes. This encourages the player to be alert and actively search for ways to survive.

Lens of punishment

Don’t Starve can be very punishing as if you die in game, the game world will be deleted along with all your progress. This can be devastating to a causal player who died to a silly mistake. At first glance this can seem as unfair and frustrating to some. This results in an effect that your life is very precious and any mistake can be fatal. There are also many enemies in the game, events or environmental hazards that can kill you. Although this reinforces the design of the game as a dark survival game, it may be too much for some players. On the other hand, if you manage to survive a long duration of time, it gives the player a sense of pride and accomplishment. This works well with the theme of the game which emphasizes heavily on survival with little hand-holding.

In this picture, my base just got destroyed by a Bearger.

I tried to lure it to some killer bees..

But, he wrecked us all.

Lens of control

The interface of the game is quite intuitive and simple. The hotbar at the bottom, crafting window on the left and character status on the right gives the necessary information to the player concisely and clearly. The interface is very learnable and effective.

The player can also hover over objects to view the name and right click to ‘examine’ the object. This allows for more screen space for what really matters which is happening on screen near the player.