Action · 2016 · Klei Entertainment · local · online
Don't Starve Together
Survive the next winter together. Nothing is explained, dying is frequent.
What it is about
You wake in a hand-drawn wilderness with no instructions. There is hunger, night, and a sanity meter that drops when you stand too long in the dark. Your first evening consists of gathering berries and getting a fire going before it gets dark.
From that a base grows: chests, ovens, farms, a lightning rod. Everything is crafted and almost nothing is explained — which plant is edible and which creature comes at night, you learn by getting it wrong.
The seasons keep turning the screw. Summer brings fires, winter brings cold and hounds, and the longer a world runs the more is at stake. With two of you the watch divides — one gathers, one keeps the fire.
Our verdict for couples
Two people, one forest, and a game that never once tells you what to do. The first winter arrives before you even know there is one, and then you sit in the dark arguing over who gets the last of the carrots. If one of you already knows the game, this becomes one of the finest survival stories you can have together — if neither does, you will spend the first evenings less in the woods than in the wiki. On console you play split screen; on PC you need two machines.
Pros
- Considerably more approachable with two than alone
- Every character plays noticeably differently
- The world keeps running even with one of you on
Cons
- Explains nothing on its own
- One mistake can cost days
- Split screen only on console
Suitable from
Hobby–Gamer
- Conflict potential
- Spirited
- Cosiness
- Mixed
- When you can stop
- Any time
- How long it lasts
- No ending
What other co-op fans say
Two things turn up in nearly every second review: how much there is to learn, and how much better it is with two. The first is the hurdle — several write openly that after ten or twelve hours they still had no idea what was going on and had to look it up. The second is the reason to push through anyway: the art style, the dry humour and the very distinct characters are praised throughout, and failing together is plainly half the fun. If you have little time, or no taste for the genre, there is no comfortable way in here.
- “somehow surviving together makes everything 10x more chaotic and hilarious”
- “This is a much more calm survival game, and it's really fun to play.”
- “too complex to play on the side once a week for an hour”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
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