Just in time for midterms, my friends have managed to get me hooked on another new game: Don’t Starve.
While I mainly play the multiplayer version, Don’t Starve Together, my life has been enveloped by this game. I was even playing it during lecture this week. (Don’t tell my parents.)
The objective of the game is to, well, not starve to death as you’re plunged into the wilderness by an evil magician named Maxwell. A long time ago, Maxwell was a simple man, but he was consumed by desire for magic, causing him to become evil and twisted.
You start off as Wilson, a scientist also sucked into the world because of his thirst for knowledge. As you progress, you unlock more characters to play as with special abilities. My favorite is Wendy, the girl haunted by her twin sister, whom you can spawn to fight for you as a ghost. Spooky.
Aside from not starving, you have to keep your sanity and health at a steady level or you’ll die. The vast world, which is recreated randomly and differently each time you play the game, is filled with monsters and traps for your character to encounter.
You have to use your days to try to prepare for the cold winter, hunting “beefalo” and “koalefants” to make yourself warm outfits to wear for winter while still trying to not starve.
My favorite part of the multiplayer mode is the insanity that goes on during the game. I’ll hear my buddy being attacked by evil purple tentacles as my other friend dies from a dart blown by a walrus in a kilt.
It’s also fun to be the host of the servers because you can hack a little bit and mess around. You can enter commands (similar to The Sims) to change stats and spawn random items. Waffles? Yeah, I’ll spawn those. I was hungry anyway.
The horrifying part of the game is that when you and all your friends die, that’s it. The server resets and you have to start from day one again. When you die and your friends are alive, however, they can revive you numerous ways.
That’s what makes the singleplayer mode so hard. If you die, you lose. There are times we’ve made it to day 40 and we get killed by a spider queen that decided to come and wreck us all in the middle of winter.
That’s the other horrible part of the game. Just when you think you’re able to sustain yourself and live — nope. A giant “deerclops” comes and destroys your camp and kills all the beefalo you were trying to breed so you could live through winter.
With all sorts of twists and turns, Don’t Starve has quickly made it to the top of my favorite games list.
The game is available for a multitude of platforms (though the multiplayer is only for PC), such as PC, PS4, PS Vita and Wii U in the spring.
You can download it through Steam, and once you buy the game, you can gift it to your friends for only $5. Be that friend. Be the friend that gets all their other friends hooked on a game. Do it — just try not to starve.
