➤ Don't Starve Mega Pack Review 🎮

With Don't Starve, you will remember, it was love at first sight. We are not talking about a video game released the day before yesterday, mind you: Klei Entertainment put it in our hands in 2013, five years ago. Such a lapse of time, in the videogame sector, can decree the rise in the Olympus of titles that will be remembered forever ... or the complete removal from collective memory. Don't Starve has reached a middle ground: it is among the best of its kind, but it is known only to a circle of fans. It was (and is) a little gem, but that not everyone can love. It is one of those cases in which you must absolutely like the genre you belong to, as well as the graphic style proposed, and still the level of challenge tending upwards with real surges. What we are talking about today is the Don't Starve Mega Pack, or the sum of everything Klei Entertainment has worked on and continued to work on in recent years. If you already know Don't Starve, you might be amazed at how it has changed over time. If not, it's your chance to take a closer look at it.

It's okay, Wilson

Wilson is a genius scientist, all focused on his experiments. The first time we meet him is in the basic version of Don't Starve, struggling with his latest invention that just doesn't want to know that it works. Suddenly a voice speaks to him, and it comes from his antiquated radio (it's just one of the many bizarre details of the production). The voice tells him what to do and how to do it, but poor Wilson does not know that he belongs to a demon ... and in fact once activated that strange machine he is working on, he finds himself teleported into a strange, hostile and dark world. Where what matters is staying alive. Wilson does not know where it is, but we can immediately get a vague idea: it is a sort of island surrounded by the sea, characterized by various biomes. Klei Entertainment doesn't provide us with a tutorial or valuable advice, but still the indicators at the top right of the screen seem pretty clear: they show Wilson's health, state of mind and time of day.

What will happen when night falls? Better to collect as many supplies as possible for the moment, taking advantage of wild fauna and flora, or small objects that we can see on the screen ... being careful not to do damage. Don't Starve, apparently, that's all: the game mechanics are simple to understand, and even to master. Our alter ego must survive as many days as possible, in the hope (sooner or later) of returning to his world. We have to create the tools we need ourselves: a vertical bar on the left shows us the construction menu, or the projects that we can carry out if we have the right resources. This is the only compromise we can expect from the title: it is only willing to tell us what it takes to make a particular instrument, and in what quantities, but nothing more. All the rest we are forced to imagine it ourselves, or to experience it on our skin, the first few times usually with disastrous consequences. For example, what happens after sunset? Impossible to know during the first game: the whole screen goes black, and someone (or something) starts biting us. Better to light a torch or a bonfire, even if not all enemies are afraid of flames.

The last indicator on the screen is a bar on the lower side: in pure Minecraft style it shows our inventory, and allows us to quickly equip the tools we need. Importantly, Klei Entertainment has done a really good job with regards to the console gaming interface, since it was not easy to make intuitive some steps that on PC simply required a couple of mouse clicks. The configuration of the controls on the DualShock seemed very clever to us, and wisely uses the analogs for both Wilson's movement and navigation through the menus, as well as the backbones. How long will you be able to survive in the protagonist's nightmare?

PlayStation 4 Trophies

The trophies of Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together represent an ambitious goal for players: given the high level of difficulty of the title itself and the presence of the roguelike elements, they are not particularly easy to obtain. Overall they require you to craft a bit of all the in-game items present, to survive for a certain number of days in a row, and to face the most dangerous creatures scattered in the title by Klei Entertainment. If you are looking for an easy to obtain Platinum Trophy, this is not the game. Trust me.

A mega pack with all the trimmings

At the time of its publication, Don't Starve was a slap-up survival, original above all because it was able to draw on multiple different genres, making its classification very difficult. It is in fact, at the same time, an adventure, a crafting game, and above all a roguelike: every death is permanent, there is no turning back if someone or something grabs us in the dark and devours us. If anything, experience points are earned with which to unlock other characters, each with its own characteristics, able to vary a little the approach to survival. Variety was a problem from the start: Don't Starve had a lot to see in 2013, but not enough to avoid becoming repetitive after ten hours of gameplay. Five years later, things have completely changed, and the Don't Starve Mega Pack is here to prove it. The complete package in question contains all the human knowledge on the Don't Starve theme: we refer to the two great expansions, Reigns of Giants and Shipwrecked, but also to the stand alone multiplayer edition Don't Starve Togheter. Do not worry, the writer is about to give you a hand to orient yourself among many contents that for the moment represent only a mass of random names for newbies. Don't Starve itself already offers a large number of craftable items, tools and elements, as well as natural environments, creatures and characters. This is the starting point: it is the content of the Don't Starve Console Edition, the first element present in the Don't Starve Mega Pack. It is the base game, in short.

But when it comes to starting a new game, you will also understand that the Mega Pack features the two game expansions already released: Reigns of Giants and Shipwrecked. Each adds new tools, enemies, playable characters, and biomes yet again. But not only that: it also introduces variables to the game world itself, which will directly affect Wilson by putting him in danger (or helping him, if wisely exploited), for example humidity and overheating. Reigns of Giants focuses on adding the four seasons, each of which will be felt on the entire game world, and on some new particularly powerful enemies, the giants indeed (rather bizarre to see them up close). Shipwrecked in turn relies on new biomes, objects and situations, without changing the game formula at the base of Don't Starve: this time we find ourselves in tropical environments, struggling with tornadoes, monsoons, periods of drought, jungles, beaches and much more. The developers aimed to add new content, again, again and again, effectively tripling the offerings of what was the original product. And if at some point you get tired of playing Don't Starve alone ... well, Klei Entertainment has thought of that too. The Don't Starve Mega Pack contains Don't Starve Together, where even here we will have to survive ... but in company. It is a local or online multiplayer mode, able to offer a great variety of situations: the philosophy behind each game can be chosen before entering the world of our companions (or hosting one). Do we like to command or do we prefer to take orders? Are we social or rather aggressive? It is a short step from cooperation to competition, and we could become yet another problem for other online players in an already hostile game world. In all this, on PlayStation 4 the Mega Pack also gives us two themes for the dashboard, one based on Autumn (the season of Don't Starve of course) and one dedicated to the Shipwrecked expansion.

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Don't Starve Mega Pack is a really good opportunity for survival game lovers, especially for those who are not afraid of a decidedly high level of difficulty compared to today's standards. Embellished with a graphic style that closely resembles that of Tim Burton, and an extremely pleasant and fitting soundtrack, the Klei Entertainment Mega Pack allows players to save about 25% of the expected price for all the contents inside. , if they were purchased individually. There is everything you need: the base game, expansions, multiplayer mode, and even two dashboard themes. It seems that the time has come again to help Wilson create his refuge: night is coming. And nobody is safe at night.