I may be late to the party, but recently, I got around to playing “Don’t Starve” but the indie developer Klei Entertainment. I love this game, and I’m so addicted to it.
Now, I’m not one who will llike open world games like Skyrim and Mindcraft, (ugh, so ugly,) but this game is quirky and challenging enough to continue playing. The character designs, the creativity that goes into creating the recipes for food and the blueprints for tools and the strange creatures that exist throughout the universe are a surreal nightmare. But it appeals to my rather bleak sensibilities, too. Here’s why it’s a completely existential game.
- It is completely routine and repetitive.
You start in this world, gather tools, have enough to survive for the day. And the next. And the next. You do this every day until something terrible happens, like you run out of resources or get mauled by hounds. And when you restart, you don’t get to continue where you left off; you restart from Day 1. Kind of like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill, only to have his efforts undone when the boulder rolls back.
2. It’s a mash of magic, science and the supernatural.
The entire world is a pastiche of magical creatures borrowed from different types of mythology; there are black magic spells to revive your character, and there is some science thrown in with a science machine (LOL) to make sure you have some technology. It’s everything a human mind can conceive stitched together. In short, it’s a crazy universe that a sadist could possibly have come up with to torture people.
3. The ending
If you play this on adventure mode and finish all the trials, you’ll meet the wizard who trapped you here. He describes the scenario like a chess game, and that he, the king, also has to be on the board, which means he’s being manipulated. You then either choose to free him and take his places while he dies, or stand there with him for all eternity since the game doesn’t give you other options. So what choice do you make, knowing you’ll be stuck there forever?