Don’t Starve Together (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.8.0 Update

Don’t Starve Together is a survival game developed by Klei Entertainment. The game was initially released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux on April 23, 2013. A PlayStation 4 port, renamed Don’t Starve: Giant Edition, became available the following year (with PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 versions released in September 2014 and June 2015 respectively, and an Xbox One version released in August 2015). Don’t Starve for iOS, renamed Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition was released on July 9, 2015. An Android version was released on October 20, 2016. Downloadable content titled Reign of Giants was released on April 30, 2014, and a multiplayer standalone expansion called Don’t Starve Together became free for existing users on June 3, 2015. On Steam, this game is able to be purchased with a free copy for a friend. A Nintendo Switch port came out on April 12, 2018.

GAMEPLAY

Don’t Starve is an action-adventure game with a randomly generated open world and elements of survival and roguelike gameplay. Combat is handled by pointing and clicking with the mouse, or by using “force attack” (ctrl+f), while other activities are controlled by the keyboard, or using the inbuilt gamepad support to play using a controller, giving it a console-like gameplay feel. The goal is to survive as long as possible, and a count of the number of days the player has survived is shown onscreen, as well as the season. The game keeps few records of player progress besides the total number of experience points and the playable characters unlocked. Wilson is the default playable character, unlocked upon purchase of the game, but the next character, Willow, can be unlocked with 160 experience points. Woodie, the last character unlockable with experience, requires the game’s limit of 1,600.

Each character has a perk that is specific to them, as well as a disadvantage. The player earns 20 experience points each in-game day and receives them after dying. Death is permanent, barring the use of several rare or expensive items like the Meat Effigy, Touch-Stone, and Life-Giving Amulet. The game relies on a day/night cycle that causes meaningful fluctuations in gameplay style. During the day, the player spends most of their time exploring the world: gathering food, firewood, and other resources, discovering crafting recipes to combine available items, and avoiding enemies. With nightfall comes dangerous monsters and an invisible menace, Charlie, who attacks the player when the screen is dark. A player must have a light source or night vision to prevent Charlie from attacking. Crafting from recipes allows the player to build shelter, weapons, and tools like axes. Almost all tools will break after running out of durability, by using them, with exceptions such as Woodie’s Axe.

Players can forage and farm plants as well as hunt animals for sustenance, with several characters having dietary perks or restrictions. Food can spoil, however, so the player cannot keep it for too long. Eating spoiled food results in a loss of health, sanity, and a reduced increase in hunger restoration relative to that provided by fresh food. Each in-game day takes 8 minutes of real time. The length of day and night varies across the seasons, with day being shorter and night longer in winter. Death can occur in a variety of ways. The player has three gauges displayed on the game’s head-up display, which respectively track hunger, health, and sanity. Hunger diminishes by default, being replenished with food. Sanity decreases during the dusk and night or as a result of specific unpleasant actions, such as robbing graves or being near monsters; it can be replenished through mentally stimulating activities, such as sleeping, picking flowers, and wearing fashionable clothing. When the hunger meter reaches zero, it begins to chip away at health, which will eventually result in the player’s death. A large variety of creatures can attack the player, including giant one-eyed birds, tree monsters, tentacles whose owners are not shown, and even small, weak frogs that will nonetheless try to accost the player.

When attacked by a frog, the player will drop a random item in their inventory. Additionally, when a character’s sanity is below 15% of their sanity limit, figments of the character’s imagination become corporeal and able to attack the player. Some creatures, such as pig-like creatures often found in tribes, begin as neutral to the player (excluding the Reign of Giants character Webber), but the player’s actions may lead them to be allies or hostile foes, such as attacking one. The bulk of the game is played in Sandbox Mode, but there is a second mode, Adventure, which the player can access by finding a landmark called Maxwell’s Door. Adventure serves as the game’s campaign, consisting of five levels that pit the player against Maxwell, the antagonist of Don’t Starve. The player loses all items and recipes upon entering and can only pick four items to keep upon completion of each chapter. Death or the end of the five sections returns the player intact to Sandbox Mode.

CHARACTERS

Wilson, a gentleman scientist, is the protagonist of Don’t Starve. While Wilson has no special abilities beyond growth of “a magnificent beard”, which slows the speed of freezing in winter and accelerates overheating in summer, other playable characters do: Willow, a firestarter, spawns into the world with a unique lighter which acts as a better initial light source and is immune to fire damage, but will start spreadable fires on the ground when she has low sanity. A girl named Wendy receives visits from her deceased twin sister Abigail when summoned, who can help her attack monsters. The strongman, Wolfgang, has high health and significant offensive capabilities that grow better the more his hunger meter is full, but he starves faster and loses more sanity when near danger.

WX-78 is an automaton who nonetheless needs to eat, sleep, and stay mentally stimulated, but does not become ill from spoiled food, can increase their maximum health, hunger, and sanity with gears (reset to the original maximum after dying and respawning; the corpse leaves behind a portion of the used ones), and takes damage from rain (which causes sparks bright enough to ward off Charlie). Being made of conductible material, WX-78 also attracts lightning that surrounds them by a glow that gradually dies down as time passes and refills their health, but also lowers their sanity. Wes is a mime with fast depleting hunger and low damage.

His maximum health and hunger are lower than most characters and he cannot talk, making him unable to warn the player of status ailments or incoming enemy waves. His sole merit is the unique ability to make balloons (which can act as diversions). Other characters include Wickerbottom, an insomniac witch writer and librarian who doesn’t require a science machine to craft many items because of her advanced intellect and who takes greater penalties from spoiled food; and Woodie, a Canadian lumberjack accompanied by a talking axe named Lucy and who has the dark secret that he turns into a werebeaver under the full moon.

The game’s supposed antagonist is Maxwell. Maxwell is described as a puppet master who is dapper and frail in stature. He is the final unlockable character, obtained after completion of the story rather than with experience points. The character version of Maxwell starts with more powerful items than the others and has a book that when activated, spawns a shadow clone of himself that aids him in battle, mining, and wood chopping. A maximum of 3 puppets can be spawned at once, and each will disappear 2.5 days after it is spawned if it doesn’t die earlier. The secondary antagonist in all games, and the primary antagonist of the multiplayer sequel § Don’t Starve Together (DST), is Maxwell’s old magic assistant Charlie, attacking the player if they’re in complete darkness.

STORY

The game opens with Maxwell snidely commenting on the player’s gaunt appearance and includes little further story. The game’s setup is told further through its trailer: on a dark and stormy night, in his house deep in a mountainous forest within New England, Wilson appears to be getting nowhere in a chemistry experiment until he is startled by his radio speaking to him. It reveals that it has noticed his trouble and has secret knowledge for him. When he eagerly agrees, a flurry of equations and diagrams encircle him and fill his head. Using white rats, a typewriter, and his blood among other tools and materials, Wilson creates a giant machine.

The radio commends his work and tells him to pull the machine’s switch. He hesitates, but at the radio’s insistence, he does so. The machine rattles violently, and a pair of ghostly arms whisk him into a different world while an apparition of Maxwell cackles. As Wilson (and indeed the other characters who were lured into Maxwell’s door) survives, he finds that the Constant, despite at first glance resembling the real world, is not a normal plane of reality, as it is inhabited by not only creatures different from their real world counterparts, but also overall hideous and sometimes powerful monsters that are unrecognisable from anything found in the real world, and worst of all.

Shadow creatures materialise whenever he is feeling afraid, and deep within the caves on the mainland, Wilson is able to find the ruins of a technologically advanced race of arthropod creatures who were once the dominant species of the Constant, but destroyed themselves with the overuse of nightmare fuel that these shadow creatures are composed of. During the Adventure mode, at the start of each chapter, Maxwell appears and comments. At first, he seems impressed at the player’s hardiness; he then becomes irritated and urges the player to turn back. He offers the player a truce but, upon its decline, becomes enraged. At the end of Adventure mode, the player reaches an island called Maxwell’s Island with a hall belonging to Maxwell on it.

The player finds Maxwell trapped in a throne encircled by short stone pillars. It is implied that this is a fate worse than death, and Maxwell was trying to kill the player to prevent them from meeting the same fate he has. The player is at first unable to free him but finds a keyhole and a key nearby. The player sets Maxwell free, but he turns into a skeleton and disintegrates as he stands up. The ghostly arms from the trailer then grab the player and ensnare him in the throne. An epilogue implies that the player will take on a villainous role similar to Maxwell’s using newfound powers given by the throne but will nonetheless be trapped forever.