Don't Starve: It's a game-thing

[案山子]

Anybody here know about it or play it?

It's a survival rogue-like essentially with a nice hand-drawn art style. Here's a video of the game's latest update:



The website: http://www.dontstarvegame.com/

If you purchase before official launch you get it for 20% off plus a free copy to give to another human being, or your cat!

[SuperNerd]

Yep, I own it. I think it's a fantastic game. It's visual style is so distinct and fun to watch and be a part of. It also does not hold your hand in the least bit, you are literally thrown into the wild and it's up to you to survive. I only got the game a few days ago, so my highest record is only 8 days, which is a bit embarrassing, although I guess that isn't entirely fair to say (I got pineappleed over by being unlucky enough to have 2 Treeguards spawn on me at the very beginning of your set-up period, I stood no chance). My friend's record is 28 days, so once I start it up again, that's what I'm aiming to beat.

As of now, as Steam says, it's only in Beta, so there's still a lot coming and being refined. At this point it's almost seemed like they've added a big update every week or two and they plan to support the game with major updates for up to 6 months upon it's official release. I'm really hoping they add more incentives to last longer (currently the only reason to survive as long as possible is because it gets you "EXP" and the "EXP" unlocks new characters, which aren't just different character models--they also have their own unique pros and cons), something bigger to work towards. Also, I hope they add achievements, cause I'm a bit of an achievement/trophy-whore.

[Secun]

Preordering also gets you the Ham Shank melee weapon for Team Fortress 2. (It's a shank of ham)

[FenixR]

I may buy it, but i don't have anyone to give that extra copy (All my RL friends are tools when it comes to games). If anyone want to trade for a equally priced game or 5-10$ steam bucks do tell.

[案山子]

I only got the game a few days ago, so my highest record is only 8 days, which is a bit embarrassing, although I guess that isn't entirely fair to say (I got pineappleed over by being unlucky enough to have 2 Treeguards spawn on me at the very beginning of your set-up period, I stood no chance). My friend's record is 28 days, so once I start it up again, that's what I'm aiming to beat.

When I first started (During the Winter Update) I think I died after a few days, then I started fighting to get past Days 15~17. After that I was able to dominate and got to 70+ before using the Wooden Thing. Rain Update made the game a lot harder I feel and so far I'm struggling to make it to winter again.

I think the only thing I'd say I'd like to see improved is the combat system. I'd like to see mods in the future adding new weapons to spice things up if anything else. Also, apparently the devs are planning to have each character able to use a special skill to help differentiate them from one another, so that should be interesting as well.

[Saber]

I'm sure you know I play it given that I got it from you, but so far it's been pretty okay and not too hard! My record was only nine days I think, made the mistake of trying to kill a hound when I didn't have much HP left. ;_; I've been playing more lately since I only recently found out it even had unlockable characters.

[案山子]

Preordering also gets you the Ham Shank melee weapon for Team Fortress 2. (It's a shank of ham)

I think there's a hat as well.

[Dark Link]

My RL friend gave me a beta code to the game a couple months ago. Still haven't touched it lol.

[Polantaris]

I may buy it, but i don't have anyone to give that extra copy (All my RL friends are tools when it comes to games). If anyone want to trade for a equally priced game or 5-10$ steam bucks do tell.

I'm definitely down for that kind of deal, if it's still available. In the same boat as you.

I don't really have many games in my Inventory that I could gift you, but you're free to view it here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/polantaris/inventory/
If you want something else that's around $5-8, though, let me know and I can get it for a trade.

[案山子]

Daaaang, this update broke everybody apparently. Devs chimed in:

Lots of good points by lots of people in this thread - it was a very interesting read.

I think we've found our difficulty ceiling at last - pretty much nobody is complaining that things are too easy now. I think that the overall feeling is close to what we are going for, but there are a couple of points that still need to be addressed:

1) Winter has a couple of very specific requirements, that aren't always easy to fulfill. Right now, if you can't find beefalo, you're in for a hard time. We're going to add some more warmth-giving craftables that use different low-level materials, to remove the bottleneck.

2) Healing is better decoupled from food, but there's another bottleneck on honey. We're looking into a spider-based healing craftable. They're pretty common, so that should tide people over until their honey farms are up and running.

3) Killer bees! They're crazy! I think we might remove them from the normal bee structures, and keep them in their own wasp nests.

4) More findable loot. We're adding setpieces that have free, high-level stuff in them. These will encourage exploration, and give you a time-limited advantage / preview of cool high-level tools when you find them.

5) We're adding findable one-time-use respawning statues called touchstones. Kind of like a non-craftable effigy without the penalty.

6) Lightning rods - protect your flammable base stuff, or direct lighting to certain locations for other purposes.

I think that these changes will help to smooth over the initial difficulty curve. I may tone down the default hound numbers a bit, because they were put into such big crowds back when the game was a lot easier overall.

Another idea that I'm not sure of yet is increasing the overall health cap to 150 or 200. Now that healing items are more rare, it may be more appropriate to have a bit more durability in the player. I think this worked out quite well with sanity. Sometimes you just need a little more dynamic range in your numbers.

I'm still mulling over the idea of a 'cheat' mode, where you respawn as in minecraft or terraria... it would be something that you'd have to enable in the custom settings if it goes in. It'd probably be implemented using a variant of the touchstone. I haven't thought it through fully, though. I don't want it in the default game, but the new customization screen gives us a lot of leeway for changing the experience to suit different tastes.

Scattered loot should give more incentive to travel around more often. It's also nice to see more clothing options that won't require beefalo and more healing options that won't require honey -- though at the moment you can just kill butterflies and eat their wings for like 20hp trollolololo.

[Polantaris]

Was doing...decently, for someone who just started...until I got hungry and ate a Red Cap. Instant death.

Made me sad.

[案山子]

Latest trailer for the next update: