A standalone expansion to the hit indie game Don’t Starve, Don’t Starve Together is riotous fun with friends, be it competitive carnage or cooperative construction.

Don’t Starve Together retains many of the aspects we saw in the original single-player experience; a unique and quirky art-style combined with a similarly unique and quirky survival game-play experience. The dark is as dangerous as ever, your only solace the sparse campfires that you’re able to build to stave off your inevitable death to the ever encroaching darkness. The only major differences are a lack of the recent Shipwrecked DLC, the upcoming Hamlet DLC, and several story aspects such as Maxwell’s door.

Just a small selection of possible *Don’t Starve Together* skins

While there are luckily no pay-to-win aspects to the multiplayer experience, there are a vast variety of cosmetics players can purchase, not only skins for characters, but also skins for most of the items in the game, meaning there’s a significant potential for customizing your character and even base appearance within the game. As long as everything game-play wise is kept unlockable within the game-play itself, I have no issue with this, and cosmetics are even unlockable via non-paying methods. Huzzah!

How It Feels

Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together have both always had a strong base in the way that they play, it feels smooth, it’s simple enough for anyone to get into, and yet a certain difficulty resides hidden in the games combat, and certainly its later, more challenging seasons. It never feels overbearing, yet there’s a constant pressure on doing things the most efficient way to ensure you Don’t Starve.

Unlike in some survival games however, this isn’t to the point it begins diminishing other aspects, and you have plenty of time between finding meals to explore – or attempt to kill that bee queen you swore wouldn’t be too difficult. Therein lies the main fun of the game for me – exploration, seeing the quirky enemies that Don’t Starve Together can conjure up, and figuring out how to take them down despite the odds. This is only enhanced by being able to do this with other players, and the sheer joy and carnage of a whole group of you being slaughtered by a slime monster you woefully underestimate is a bitter-sweet joy I won’t soon forget.

One of the many issues you’ll encounter… fire.

The game, if you’re not going for full-on 100% completion, will last roughly 30 hours, give or take a few days depending on how good you are at keeping enough meat in the ice-box. There are plenty of things to discover, and yet… you reach a point where you’ve simply done most of what there is to do. This is where the game falters a little, and it becomes more difficult to keep enjoying.

When the main fun of your experience relies upon discovering and destroying new things, and you’ve run out of that, Don’t Starve Together begins to trawl to slow, anti-climactic close. I found in my final days playing the game with friends, that we wandered around somewhat aimlessly, hoping a new creature would pop up from the nether and introduce themselves, but sadly, once you’ve explored the map this is a rare experience without a change of season. Sadly, this map that you have to explore is also relatively small, even if you set it to the largest setting, within a few hours you can have explored the whole thing, one of my largest disappointments with the Don’t Starve franchise. Part of me wishes there was some kind of infinite procedural generation, mixed in with random chance, to give me the worry that I might stumble upon a dozen hound mounds past the next boulder, but that’s just not the case.

Could we not have deadly trees coming to life, that’d be great, thanks..

Artwork & Soundtrack

The artwork is the main unique aspect that differentiates the Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together series, along with the surprisingly jaunty soundtrack I’ve come to love. It makes the game that much more special with it’s somehow dark and yet cheerful appearance, reminiscent to me of Tim Burton style aesthetic.

The music just adds to this whole experience, and together, they make for a wonderfully smooth experience that can be replicated by few other franchises. It’s truly a joy to first wander around the world, each creature displaying its on personality enhanced by Don’t Starve Together‘s tantalizing graphics. There are moments that clearly stick out, and I’ll always remember, such as my first encounter with the terrifying screech a rabbit lets out when you get near, something Klei achieves with a combination of sound and animation work.

Events are one of the main parts of the *Don’t Starve Together* experience

If you experience the game for a few hours, I’d still say it’s worth getting on a sale, simply due to the fresh visuals and playing style that it brings to the table. New ideas and forms of game-play are something the industry seriously needs at the moment.

Final Thoughts

Don’t Starve Together is a joy to experience, both in the way it plays, and the way it looks and feels. With friends this is amplified tenfold, making it one of the best co-operative games currently out there… if only it kept that joy going it’d be one of my favorite games. A decently long romp, with the potential of expansions and DLC, as Klei seem keen to add, to be something truly special.

If you want to read more about the site: Go here
If you want to read more about us: Click here