Don't Starve

Tipped off to this one thanks to RPS. There's a time-limited demo through Chrome, and it's available on Steam in playable-alpha form. It seems more stable and feature-complete to me than many finished games (though apparently they are still adding stuff), so don't let that scare you off. If you buy it now through Steam, you get it at a sale price ($11.99), AND you get two copies of the game, so you can gift one to a friend. Not a bad deal.

Basically, it's a wilderness survival game. Some strange devil guy dumps you in the middle of an unexplored wilderness, and you have to stay alive for as long as you can. You do this by exploring, gathering, crafting, researching new things to craft, and sometimes fighting. It's got really great art and a cool, stylistic theme.
It has some obvious similarities to Minecraft; I'd describe it as "Minecraft for people that want more of a game and less of a sandbox for building stuff." So you aren't going to build any elaborate castles in this game, but you are going to starve to death rather quickly if you don't find something to eat. You can craft things that can help you to survive, and there's a large element of using objects on objects to obtain common-sense results. For example, you can pick up flammable things and throw them on your campfire to keep it going through the night (logs work best). If you grab a food item from your inventory and click it on your campfire, you'll create a cooked version that is more effective at satiating hunger.

And I'll stop there, because the game is all about that sort of discovery, so I don't want to spoil it. Well, discovery and staying alive. Many of the things you encounter are deadly. Be careful! You'll see. It's pretty damn cool, and has a huge "one more turn" pull. Since it's not turn-based, this works out to be more like "one more night," but you get the idea. I fired it up just to try it out for a few minutes, and two hours disappeared.

And how can you not want to play a game that gets bug fixes like: "Pigmen entering houses at night will keep their hats."

Ben. Ben, Ben, Ben.

You neglected to mention that the game is also about...



SCIENCE!!!

Yeah, it is. You'll eventually realize that you are going to need more than sticks and berries to survive in the wilderness, and will endeavor to build a Science Machine to research new crafting recipes. Also, you might learn to construct a straight razor so that you can shave the beatnik beard that you grow over time. No joke!

I'm playing with Willow now, though, after my first guy was killed during an experiment that involved a torch and about a dozen spiders and not quite enough running. Willow is an unlockable character that you can play, whose special ability is that she is really good at lighting fires. Seemed like a good fit for my play style.

I'm having some difficulty advancing past the opening stage of building a firepit, laying a bunch of rabbit traps, and planting a bunch of trees for firewood. I'm just sort of meandering into other things, like maybe if I build the armor I can go fight spiders, but I don't exactly know why I want to.

At the same time, if the only measure of success in this game is how long you survive, I don't really *need* to do anything more than catch rabbits and grow trees. I can survive indefinitely doing that, I just get bored. Do you know if there is an actual win condition, escaping the island through SCIENCE or whatever? I love the game so far, but that's making me wonder if there's really more to it.

I have no idea. There could be.

It's a good idea to spend some time at night looking at the different stuff that you can research. Many of the advances are about increasing efficiency. For example, you can survive early on just by picking and eating berries. But the berries don't grow back as quickly as you can eat them, so you are going to spend an ever-increasing amount of time looking for berries, and probably eventually starve. The answer is to get better food (like discovering that you can cook berries on your campfire, and that the cooked berries are better at satiating your hunger). I suspect that trapping rabbits is the same--a good stopgap food source, but eventually you'll start top run low on carrots, and you'll have to venture farther and farther afield to find them, and you'll be spending a lot of time tending to your traps. If you can find a way to make better food, though, you'll free up more time to do other things, like explore.

Spiders are probably the source for silk, but I haven't managed to defeat any yet. A number of crafting recipes call for silk.

SCIENCE!?

Well, I'd do anything for SCIENCE!

You DO SCIENCE by building a SCIENCE MACHINE and throwing stuff into it. SCIENCE then emerges from a SCIENCE SPIGOT on the side. I understand the desire to avoid spoilers, but this is crucial to the game! And the science machine is right there on your crafting recipes from the beginning.

Also, the game is made by Klei Entertainment, of Shank and Mark of the Ninja. So you know the art is fantastic if nothing else.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dont-starve/hiledapehlkhdehbhppgmekfalnlfajc/related

Also the Chrome version takes like millenturies to load.

The Steam version works better. Faster loading and world generation. Though I think the demo is only on Chrome.

Also, your science points and researched recipes are persistent from game to game, so a good beginning tip might be to just focus on research for a couple of games, then having a run where you get to actually use all the stuff you're gathering instead of feeding it to the machine.

Fair warning: Aeon might be put off by the fact that the game progression involves using Science to discover Magic and Alchemy.

Yeah, it's super-pretty, and very atmospheric.

Whoah, I haven't been to the land of the ominous outhouses yet. Neat.

As for feeding things to the machine...

More proof that aesthetics are about art style. It's a fancy looking game and I'm sold on the mechanic of exploring through poking at shit.

I especially love that items have different actions and uses based on the context. Good demo, game bought.

SCIENCE IN THE BUTT

GOD DAMN IT

So is this UnReal world with a reasonable interface and Tim Burton graphics?

I may have to buy it just for the HOPE that such a things exists.

Anyone want my friend copy?

You have a PM. :)

SOLD

This is pretty great, I'd say more, but as the OP said, it's a game about discovery.

Fucking trees man, came back to the campfire to spend the night, figured i'd spend it a little productively and do some work and... And even that gets better.

Same question, but about my friend copy, not Jason's.

Ooh, I do!

Done!

Except, I can't figure out where the button is on Steam. Also, be my Steam friend!

edit: "yossar"?

Dammit I want a free copy of this. Hook a sista up somebody :D

I don't know how you figured that out, but yes!

Thank you!

Yay! Now tell me how to suck less at it, please kthx

I'll give someone a $1 for a free copy or my undying love. Going rate for the latter equates to that of the former.

Put me down for hopeful for a friend copy, too. I think I still have a coupon or something on the shelf to trade.

I'll take a friend copy if there's more available!

I accidentally the whole forest when I was playing her. To be more precise, everything caught fire when I was whacking spiders with a torch in the middle of the forest at night. I though it was all fun and giggles when the whole map, and everything in it, started burning... But that was when the tree effigy/golem started spawning :/

Does food become a problem after a few days? I played for an hour or so and it seemed like I had enough berries and carrots to last for a while. I just threw all my bushes in the science machine.

I fought a

by lighting an entire forest on fire with a small camp fire that I overloaded.

At the time it seemed brilliant, but then all the loot burned up. Fff.

Hanacker The goal of the game is to minimize time spent gathering and maximize time spent adventuring. You level up in a given attempt by developing a camp infrastructure (fire pits and chests near all the major node areas to minimize travel time and maximize inv space), building advanced tools and expanding your map. It's not so much that you'll starve in the early part of the game (you have to really try to die) as you'll end up wasting all your time on trivial bullshit because you've not had time to develop things R. Cruesoe style.

In a more traditional rpg it'd be equivalent to upgrading your character with more ap. Different conceit, same result.

edit: the hanacmer were cousins of the dwemer, obviously.

Anyone still need a friend copy?

Yes, please.