1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (27 votes, average: 4.00 / 5)
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Don't Starve Together

Fight and scavenge to survive in this dark and whimsical sandbox game, beautifully crafted in a 2D cartoon style in a 3D world by Klei Entertainment. Players must maintain sanity, health, and hunger to thrive in a world where nearly everything is out to kill them.

Publisher: Klei Entertainment
Playerbase: Medium
Type: B2P Survival
Release Date: December 15, 2014
PvP: PvP can be enabled by server
Pros: +Unique art style. +Randomly generated maps (tons of replay value). +Hundreds of unique items to craft.
Cons: -Steep learning curve (No tutorial).

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Overview

Don't Starve Together Overview

Don’t Starve Together is a dark fantasy survival game where players are transported into a randomly generated map that is eager to kill them. Players must work together to exploit their environment to combat their ever-draining sanity, health, and hunger for as long as possible. Craft weapons to fight monsters, cook food to stave starvation, and make sure you always have a fire for nighttime. If the harsh winter, packs of hounds, or dapper walruses don’t get you, something else will. Players can choose from three game modes with different features, including whether to play with complete strangers or friends, or to allow PvP.

Don't Starve Together Key Features:

  • Hunting and Gathering – collect resources from different biomes and creatures to cook, build, and craft things to survive.
  • Team Play – everyone must survive! Share and support each other in the dark world, because if one player dies, their presence as a ghost will eventually kill you by driving you insane. Play with up to 64 players on a dedicated server!
  • Crafting – create your own tools, food, items, structures, and clothes to help you survive through the brutal seasons.
  • Randomly Generated New Worlds – new maps make each game different and unique. You’ll never find yourself in the same world twice.
  • Great Soundtrack and SFX – the music of Don’t Starve Together is refreshing, creepy, and haunting. Each character is voiced by a different instrument, which adds an interesting flavor to the sound dynamic of the game.

Don't Starve Together Screenshots

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Don't Starve Together Featured Video

Don't Starve Together - In With The New Beta Update Trailer

Full Review

Don't Starve Together Review

By Chanel Hwang

Don’t Starve Together is still in the Early Access Beta Testing stage. MMOs.com will update this review when the full game is released.

After being highly sought out by the Don’t Starve community, Don’t Starve Together is finally here. I jumped on board this multiplayer expansion with some friends, and immediately discovered how much more amazing this game was with the multiplayer feature. You don’t have to suffer alone, cry alone, or scream alone – you can now do it together.

The Crushing Gameplay

The gameplay of Don’t Starve Together is very relentless. There are no guides or handholding at any stage of the game, coupled with constant hunger and permadeath (except in Endless mode). There are typically three meters for each character in the top right hand corner that mark hunger, health, and sanity. In order to survive, all three must be maintained at a healthy level. There is also a day/night sundial which tracks time. Keep in mind that during the night hours, players need a source of light because utter darkness will kill you. The constant need for food and fuel for the whole team pushes you to explore and scavenge the environment. The extensive crafting system nicely compliments the hunting and gathering aspect, as you can turn everyday items like twigs and silk into axes and tents.

In the beginning, the game is exhilarating as you and your team attempt to conquer the world and create a base to survive. Given the game's lack of tutorial, new players will likely need to die several times before they realize the most efficient locations to create a base and how to best utilize their time. Foraging is great at the start, but players need to quickly establish a base with a self sustaining food supply to survive. Many threats will come knocking and you will have to learn to overcome each one without dying. Keep in mind this is strictly a survival game – as in, there is no end. Some players may find the game callously meaningless because there are no rewards for the length of time invested. You could spend five or six hours building a base, only to have it wrecked in minutes by a pack of hounds.

There's a Story Here... Right?

There are hints throughout Don’t Starve Together that indicate an intricate story. Some characters will say certain things that indicate their world wasn't so terrifying before. Players will also come across strange statutes surrounded by evil flowers, which point to a villain behind the scenes. However, as of the Early Access stage, there is no way to pursue or discover more of the plot. Despite no clear story, these hints help create a creepy atmosphere.

Honestly, the lack of access to the story takes away from the gameplay. Hopefully in the future, the multiplayer expansion will delve deeper into the story like the single player game.

Awesome Graphics and Music

The Tim Burton-esque art style of Don’t Starve Together is very both attractive and unique. The cartoony 3D world with 2D characters makes the game feel like a children’s book gone wrong. Everything but flowers have a haunted look, adding to the bleak and dark feeling of the game.

The creepy jazz-ragtime-style music brings a 1900s feel to the game, adding to the dark and bleak nature of the world. Every aspect of the sounds – from the soundtrack to the character voices – are brilliantly done.

Let's Do That Again

The replay value of Don’t Starve Together is initially pretty high due to the shocking events that can abruptly end the game. Players will find themselves eager to dive back into a new world, with more experience and knowledge about how to survive. Each new obstacle is difficult to surpass, so be prepared to make many attempts. However, several new worlds later, players may find it difficult to sustain interest after having survived through all four seasons repeatedly.

A noteworthy aspect of the replayability of the game is its quirky cast of characters. Each character has different strengths and weaknesses, along with different strategies for survival. For example, one of the characters can only eat meat, but is physically strong and can craft special tools for fighting.

Another feature that makes the replay value of Don’t Starve Together exceptional is the game's three distinct game modes.

Survival is the default mode, in which dead players become ghosts and drain the sanity of other living players. If all players die, a timer starts. When that timer reaches zero and all players are still dead, then the world resets.

Endless is a more relaxed mode, where dead players are resurrected at the Jury-Rigged Portal (the spawn point). This mode does not require players to cooperate as much, as the death of your teammates does not result in everyone else taking a sanity penalty.

Wilderness is a more like the traditional survival game modes, where players are spawned randomly throughout the world (instead of all at the Jury-Rigged Portal). Upon dying, players do not become ghosts – instead, they are taken to the Character Select screen and are randomly spawned again with a map that has been wiped clean.

Players can also choose to allow PvP, or try a new world with strangers, which brings new encounters and experiences.

Final Verdict - Great

Don’t Starve Together is a great multiplayer experience. Huddling around a fire at night together or scrambling to revive a teammate really breeds a sense of camaraderie. However, I do think that one downfall of the game is the feeling of futility. Because there is no story driving the gameplay, investing hours into the world only to lose it in a heartbeat with no reward is a bit unforgiving. Hopefully in the future, Klei Entertainment will intertwine more plot into the gameplay to sustain players’ interest in Don’t Starve Together.

Screenshots

Don't Starve Together Screenshots

Videos

Don't Starve Together Videos

Playlist: Don't Starve Together (B2P)

System Requirements

Don't Starve Together System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10 / Linux
CPU: 1.7+ GHz or better
RAM: 1 GB RAM
Video Card: Radeon HD5450 or better
Hard Disk Space: 750 MB

Mac OS X Requirements:

Operating System: Lion (OSX 10.7.X)
CPU: 2 GHz Intel CPU
RAM: 4 GB RAM
Video Card: Any Nvidia or ATI GPU
Hard Disk Space: 750 MB

Music

Don't Starve Together Music & Soundtrack

Additional Info

Don't Starve Together Additional Information

Developer(s): Klei Entertainment
Publisher(s): Klei Entertainment via Steam

Game Engine: C++ and LUA
Composer(s): Vince de Vera and Jason Garner

Development History / Background:

Don't Starve Together was developed by Vancouver, British Columbia based game studio Klei Entertainment. Don’t Starve first started as a part of a 48-hour game jam in 2010. At the time, Klei Entertainment was busy with the development of other games, and decided to come back to this project in the near future. A few years later, with the trend of sandbox survival games on the rise (Think Rust and DayZ), Klei Entertainment decided to revisit Don’t Starve. Influenced by the Nintendo DS title Lost in Blue, Minecraft, and the art of Tim Burton, Don’t Starve emerged with a strong emphasis on exploration and experimentation.

Due to the high demands for a multiplayer expansion, Klei Entertainment announced on May 7, 2014, that Don’t Starve Together would be coming that summer. On December 15, 2014, the game hit Steam Early Access and has since been very positively received. Throughout early access, players interested in the game need to purchase it prior to playing, but after the game exits beta, anyone who owns a copy of the original Don't Starve will get Don't Starve Together for free.