Don’t Starve has always been a weirdly wonderful self-contained world, operating by its own internal logic. Part of the joy of exploring the world of Don’t Starve is discovering the threads that hold it together and mastering the ways in which they interact. You need a Science Machine to do science, well, because you just do. You need an alchemy machine to do alchemy, which is the same as science, but a little better. That’s Don’t Starve—a weird foray into a purgatorial dream, where its denizens seek to uncover the secrets of the world and try not to starve.
Don’t Starve, making its debut on the WiiU with Giant Edition, doesn’t go for a complete overhaul. It’s still scavenging, crafting, and resource management in its most charming format. The controls are exactly as they have been on the other consoles, with each trigger corresponding to either the inventory or the crafting menu. The added bonus of having the map displayed at all times on the GamePad is nice, but I find myself more often wanting to look at the map while the game as paused, as not to let my hunger and sanity meters drain while plotting my next expedition or when avoiding being eaten by a wolf. The real letdown is the lack of touch and stylus controls; a game originally made to be played with a mouse would feel right at home with a stylus. Off-TV play doesn’t scale well to the GamePad’s screen, making it difficult to see smaller items lying about. It’s a real miss.
No matter how you choose to avoid starvation and death, Don’t Starve has an excellent rhythm about it. You start with nothing, so early on you are more often scavenging for basic supplies—grass, flint, sticks, and berries. Then, as your resources ramp up, you can create tools such as axes, shovels, and rabbit traps. As night falls, you’ve got to light a fire, or leave yourself vulnerable to the werewolves and other night creepers. If all goes well, the next day, you’re a little better off and a little more prepared until Don’t Starve throws it next randomly-generated curveball.
The game really starts to shine when you’ve established a home base with its own fire pit, pig houses, bee boxes, ice boxes, and whatever other ridiculous mechanical and magical contraptions you can scrape together. The world is randomly generated at the outset, so the resources are available are widely vary, giving each playthrough a reasonable freshness. It always feels like the first three to five days in a new session are spent doing the same things: gathering sticks, grass, and berries while chopping wood to stay alive, but the deeper you go, there more unique your world feels.
Surviving isn’t just about gathering, researching, and crafting whatever is available—it’s about understanding the systems at play in the world and how they interact. Some of it is rather intuitive—throw some berries and some rabbit meat in the crock pot to make meatballs. However, the world of Don’t Starve is at its best when it’s weird. Shave your beard hair and cook some meat, then build a Meat Effigy, bringing you back to life if you die. Skin a pig and slog together some wooden boards and build a pig house, which generates more pigs. Feed the pigs and have a pig army follow you to take on a spider queen. Fashion them a beefalo hat so they can blend into to the roaming herd of beefalo as you collect their poop to fertilize your crops. The ecology of Don’t Starve is otherworldly, but at least it is consistent.
Death is permanent, forcing player prudence and adding an extra layer of tension each time you jump down into a cavern or head out on a winter expedition without your hat or thermal heat stone. It’s extremely disappointing when you abruptly die because you accidently poked a pack of penguins with stick or cut down too many trees without planting new ones—summoning a very angry tree guardian that will kill you in a few hits. Death—as part of the discovery process—works well in shorter, snappier games, but in Don’t Starve, permadeath is a disheartening and occasionally a catastrophic event. Don’t Starve deaths suck—once you’ve spent four or five hours exploring a world, establishing a sense of place, and brave the elements only to have it all ripped away in an instant, you’ll need a nap.
Luckily, Don’t Starve retains a little progress, remembering discovered crafting recipes and using the number of days survived as a means to unlock new characters. Playing with a new character changes the approach slightly. Each new unlockable character has a slightly different playstyle, offering something fresh to help ease the agony of permadeath.
With the Giant Edition, Don’t Starve comes fully loaded with the Reign of Giants DLC. Reign of Giants is strictly another layer of Don’t Starve aimed at experienced players. While offering very little to new players (other than terror), Reign of Giants deepens the Don’t Starve experience and diversifies its ecology, adding new monsters, items, seasons, bosses, and unlockable characters, including some sort of Norse girl who has a sword and will only eat meat. I noticed a few new mechanics, too—if you fancy keeping your rabbits in a box before you murder and cook them as to prevent meat spoilage, you’ll now have to keep them fed if you have Reign of Giants activated. It’s a deep, deep layer of Don’t Starve that’s nearly impenetrable—even for someone who’s played the base game (poorly) on PC for nearly 35 hours.
But that’s another strong suit of Don’t Starve: even if your abilities can’t get you through the dead of winter, there’s plenty to do. Don’t Starve can be played at both an extremely high level (see: the internet), but is similarly enjoyed at an intermediate level. Apparently, there’s an endgame adventure mode, too. But don’t ask me about that, I always go insane because I don’t have enough fancy clothes and starve to death.
