Visuals and theming are amazing. The Tim Burton artstyle really adds a lot to the experience of being trapped in the brutal wilderness full of monsters and terror. I especially love the occasional cartoony moments that defuse the tension a bit.

The gameplay, though, leaves a lot to be desired. Don't Starve pays lip service to "roguelite" but every run feels pretty similar once you know what you're doing. There's a definite meta and progression chain with no variation. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll be stumbling into noob traps and hitting your head against the wall until you look up a guide.

This review of Don't Starve isn't going to be very conventional as far as my writing goes. I try to be as thorough as possible with these, especially with games that I've completed, but with Don't Starve, I simply cannot do either. Klei Entertainment has absolutely stuffed this game full of content that I simply cannot experience in its entirety within the time frame I was able to play this game.

That being said, Don't Starve is an enjoyable time. There's a wealth of different things to build, ways to survive, and things to do. There are straight-up areas of the game that I know exist that I did not get to. In any case, there's a lot to do in this game, and part of the fun is coming across all of the things you can find and wondering what they do. Not all of what they do is interesting, mind you, but there's so much that some of it is inevitably going to be fun. For example, cooking food on a fire eventually becomes a monotonous, automatic task, but is made more fun when you build a crock pot, which allows you to experiment with different recipes that have different levels of effectiveness. Despite that, I can't help but feel the game's procedural generation isn't as good as it could be. It mostly focuses on "setpieces", individual areas with unique events, rather than the map itself. While this is a unique approach, it does mean that every game of Don't Starve feels essentially the same to me. Maps always have the same broad areas for the most part and even if the layout is different, it doesn't feel that way. In the thirty or so hours I spent with the game, I couldn't say I was presented with the same uniqueness that other procgen games such as Spelunky and Brogue had recently shown me. Despite the wealth of content, I just sort of got bored near the final stretch, but still felt satisfaction in reaching the "end goal" for this exchange. The game is helped by its stellar presentation; a Tim Burton-inspired world with memorable character designs, tons of personality in the fluid and expressive animation, and a genuinely whimsical if overly short soundtrack. Some minor issues, such as an unnecessary 60 FPS lock, remain over a decade after release, but it's not a huge problem.

Would I recommend Don't Starve, then? I honestly don't know if I can. Not because the game is not quality, it is, but because I have not experienced enough of it yet. If you like survival games and somehow haven't played it yet, it's certainly worth a shot.