Indie games like Witch Beam’s Unpacking and BlueTwelves strayed tend to grab the attention of the mainstream just as often as AAA titles. Popularity isn’t always achieved at launch, though, with InnerSloth’s Among us becoming a phenomenon two years after its release in 2018 during the COVID-19 pandemic. While not directly equivalent, Clay Entertainment’s don’t starve saw renewed interest with the release of its multiplayer counterpart Don’t starve togetherand subsequent console ports have kept the survival roguelike relevant.
Klei had a lot of industry experience leading up to don’t starve in 2013, working on games like Shaft and sign of the ninja. Still, with a macabre Tim Burton-esque art style, the survival game was a breakthrough hit, arguably standing alongside many indie Renaissance titles such as Super meat boy and The Binding of Isaac as examples of what a smaller team can achieve. Although Klei Entertainment would move on to Oxygen not included and Griftlands, don’t starve still gets a lot of attention.
This is largely due to Don’t starve togetherthe standalone multiplayer expansion that added tons of content to the base experience after coming out in 2016. New content in every game is a huge draw, but being able to survive with a group of friends makes the experience that much better – and Don’t starve together‘s player base expanded in April with a Nintendo Switch port. Those players have gotten a good sense of a game that feels like built for multiplayer, seemingly balancing itself as more users are added.
Don’t starve together’s basic structure
Don’t starve together is a survival game like Minecraft or Terrariums; players are dropped into an unforgiving wilderness and must learn how to keep themselves alive (probably by looking at a fan wiki). However, the roguelike elements often take center stage, as The Constant, the procedurally generated world, has dangers around every corner that literally change with each season. Players must maintain their health, hunger and sanity as they battle hostile forces ranging from spiders to bosses like Deerclops, and even darkness every night.
The course of the game comes down to fulfilling Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Players must ensure they have a steady supply of food so they can focus on building a base, then experiment with various scientific and magical pursuits designed to make survival more sustainable. It’s a stressful experience that can turn zen as players spend each day gathering meat and other resources to stock up for a harsh winter—and other tough seasons like summer if they survive the cold.
How Don’t Starve’s multiplayer seems to be balancing itself
Don’t starve together thrives better than its single-player predecessor because of the way it encourages teamwork. although Together generally has a lot more content, being able to distribute tasks among up to four players makes even basic survival tasks more interesting. One player can catch rabbits while another builds bee boxes for honey, and both ingredients can be combined into more filling meals with a crockpot developed by someone else. What was perhaps three days of solo work becomes a community effort, making it easier to survive.
Yet Don’t starve together‘s inherent design balances the relative ease of multiplayer survival. Unlike the Monster Hunter series and similar co-op titles in which multiple people in a lobby artificially inflate the difficulty by increasing the enemy’s health, just about anything in Don’t starve together is the same whether a user is alone or not. The difficulty comes from the more realistic challenge of surviving with multiple people, such as burning food through faster and crafting resources.
That’s not to say that every character in Don’t starve together has different stat distributions and inherent traits that affect how they survive. For example, Wigfrid is a strong fighter who starts out with a weapon and armor to refuel opponents, but can only eat meat – rendering early food sources like berry bushes worthless until building a crockpot. Meanwhile, Wendy is a weak girl who has better control of her mind thanks to experience with her late sister Abigail, an entity who can be summoned to fight on Wendy’s behalf. Players can hop in and out, allowing some characters to complete tasks that might be more difficult for others without cutting the power completely.
By designing a game that almost completely balances itself through challenging mechanics, Klei Entertainment has clearly hit gold. The studio continued to grow Don’t starve togethercharacters and activities with DLC expansions such as “Reign of Giants”, “Shipwrecked” and “Hamlet” through 2018. In addition, it has kept the game alive through modding support, ports to consoles like Switch, and a recent crossover with Terrariums. Other developers can certainly learn lessons from how the don’t starve brand has evolved in nearly a decade.
Don’t starve together is now available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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