Don’t StarveTogether was a wonderfully unexpected multiplayer spin-off of Klei’s breadwinning survival franchise. What started as a humble mixture of Klei’s gorgeous, inky visuals and a brutal world of unpredictable, wonderful horrors, has since become a juggernaut in the indie gaming scene. Yet the most memorable time I’ve ever spent playing Don’t Starve Together had nothing to do with crafting fantastic forts or demolishing demons in the world beyond. No, instead, back when the game was fresh and the seasons outside had similarly turned cold, a rather profound moment of player-induced apocalyptic camaraderie is what stuck with me.
You see, Don’t Starve Together’s multiplayer isn’t just for friends. If you’re feeling friendly, or risky, you may always leave your session open to the public, letting anyone in. That was the brave course one dedicated server host made, letting a band of trolls with torches in that utterly decimated the landscape. Nothing was safe, or so it seemed. The realm was transformed from an already bitter fight for survival into the likes of which you’d never seen.
A barren wasteland, devoid of anything but the faintest scraps of life. Neither enemy nor resources to cling to. All we had was each other, every poor soul wandering into the void hoping to find a safe haven. You see, players have to manage not only their health, but make sure they’ve eaten enough as well, and they have to maintain their sanity.
Every cycle from day to night, you’re increasingly drained, until finally, your current character expires, forcing you to start again, over and over, in an endless loop of struggling to survive.
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This purgatory claimed a good twenty players into its maw, as a handful of our kin told us in the world chat that there was one island of salvation - a sole patch of land with animals, materials, and plants still growing strong. Though the trolls had been thorough, we were all determined to find this final haven. Where doubtless most players would’ve rage-quit, we were dauntless, each of us enduring death after death.
We devised new ways to temporarily stave off the cold, one of us spawning as the librarian to burn some paper pages to keep us warm, another spawning as the pyromaniac. Even with our respawns scattered across the map, we all strove to find that wonderful place to rebuild.
I never found that fabled place - the last span of life across that cold, lifeless void. However, I remember when others would, declaring with enthusiasm in the chat, and then trying to guide each of us lost out in the cold to safety. No matter how bitter some had made that world, we all kept striving to make it better. It was a wonderful sentiment, and why I look back on that night fondly, no matter how bleakly it began. Strangers across the internet, coming together as one.
