4 Ways ‘Don’t Starve’ Is Living in 2020
(and 1 Way It Isn’t)
Okay, so, I’m not starving. I’m very middle class, and while I might be struggling to pay rent, I’m definitely not starving, as my ever expanding waistline confirms. However, as I’ve gone back to play more of the excellent ‘Tim Burton meets Into The Wild’ survival game first released in 2013. Playing Don’t Starve during Covid-times, there are some striking parallels.
I’m not trying to downplay a very serious issue and horrible time for a lot of people, I’m trying to understand my own experiences with it, and because I’m an idiot, I’m doing that via a video game that has meant a lot to me.
And what better way to explore these parallels than a numbered list on the internet.
1. We’re All Stuck Here, And We Don’t Know For How Long
The unforgiving wilderness in Don’t Starve is called ‘The Constant’. The implication is clear, you’re stuck there and you’re not going anywhere soon. As I’m writing this, my country is going into a second lockdown. Like Winter (more on that later) in The Constant, it just keeps rolling around, with no clear end to the cycle in sight. There’s a day timer in Don’t Starve, and it ticks upward. It isn’t ticking down to the day of rescue or escape, it is just marking time as to how long you’ve been there. It is both scoreboard and a reminder of just how long this ordeal has been going on. It is currently 202 days since my country’s government announced lockdown, a pretty good run in Don’t Starve, especially for a terrible player like myself.
A key difference is that I can of course just power down my Switch to escape The Constant, but that’s not an option for Wilson et al, they’ll stay stuck there, roasting seeds and exchanging pleasantries with the neighborhood pigmen. Speaking of which…
2. We’re All Isolating Together
Oh my God the pigmen. They light up my life. They were the inspiration for this post, to be completely honest. When I first approached one, he screamed out: “THAT MY PERSONAL SPACE”. I raised an eyebrow. How very 2020 of them. What did these pigmen know in 2013?(or earlier/later, the joys of early access is not being able to put an actual date on a lot of this content without combing through patch notes).
I play on Switch, as I’ve mentioned, so I don’t have Don’t Starve Together, making The Constant a uniquely lonely place. You can live among the pigmen, giving them fruit in exchange for their fertilizer or meat in order to use them as a workforce/army, but you can’t live with them. Every night they’ll scamper off to their pig houses, shouting about “DARK SCARY”. It reminds me of the relationship I have with the other tenants in my building. We’ll exchange pleasantries from under our masks as we check the postbox or bring out the rubbish, but there won’t be any invitations over to flats for coffee or dinner. We’re all close together, but we spend most of our time alone.
Please don’t tell my neighbors I compared them to pigmen.
(This analogy breaks down with the exchanges of food etc. If I brought Greg two doors down a bowl of apples and asked for his shit in exchange, he’d probably be a little perturbed. At least I hope he would.)
3. The Routine Is Routine Is Routine Is Routine
Like a huge percentage of people, I suffer from anxiety and depression, and when it flares up, the daily routine of work and general life maintenance can be very difficult, and this has only been exacerbated by the repetitive grind of lockdown. Isolation and the cessation of some of my favorite things, like attending sports fixtures aren’t great for one’s mental health.
Again, to be clear, I’m crap at Don’t Starve. I’m sure there are plenty of folks who maximize their daily routines to the point where they have plenty of time and resources for exploring or prototyping dark magical devices. For me, Don’t Starve is mostly maintenance, so that I don’t, eh, starve. My pretty poor time management and love of procrastination have both been lovingly preserved in this isometric world. Every day I check my rabbit traps, dry the meat, chop down some wood, mine for some stone, feed my bird, say hi to the pigmen, tend my farm.
Occasionally I think I’ve gotten ahead of myself, but like the mountain of clothes needing washing that I never seem to make it to the bottom of, getting truly ahead of yourself is difficult in Don’t Starve. The combination of its hostile world, unexpected disasters and ticking clocks of hunger and daylight mean a day or two of maintenance are never too far off. Gamifying this experience has made me aware of how often I go through the same motions IRL, albeit with fewer ravenous hounds somehow burning down my crock pot. Be right back, need to fill the dishwasher and put some washing out to dry.
4. Winter Has Come
Winter in Don’t Starve is the above point, but, more so. During Winter, without adequate preparations, you will die. You’ll freeze or starve, or get eaten by spiders while trying not to freeze or starve. This is where the magical push and pull the game implements so well is hyper focused.
The pull is the dark, your own sanity, and in winter, the cold. You can’t range too far from your fire for too long, because you’ll freeze, so you’re constantly being pulled back home. You can have a luxuriant beard, rabbit ear muffs and a thermal stone, but eventually, you’ll get cold and have to retreat to your fire pit on pain of freezing to death and losing all of your progress.
The push is resources. You need to eat, and with my awful planning skills and lack of efficiency, I probably don’t have enough jerky to last full the winter. Or maybe I do but I’ve burned down my ice box somehow. That fire that keeps you warm, it’s eating all of your wood, so you need to go chop down some more. You’ve been burning your pine cones instead of replanting trees because you’re an idiot? Well now you’re going to have range farther out to get that wood. This carries on until you’re considering eating your pet bird, or risking freezing to trek out and snaffle some berries. RIP Professor Feathers.
In 2020 the pull is the possibility of spreading an infectious disease. Homebase is where you should stay, for your own good, and for everyone else’s. We all have our own pushes. Anxiety at being trapped, working essential jobs, medical appointments, those who can’t easily get food deliveries, wanting to protest against government injustice. These combine to make 2020 seem like a very long Winter in The Constant. But there’s one aspect missing.
Why Do I Play This Again?
When outlining this post in my head, I kept coming back to one question: Why am I playing this game then? And apart from the fantastic art and sound design, the cool systemic play and interaction and the pigmen, the key reason is the main difference between Don’t Starve and reality, itis the exploration.
After Winter comes Spring, and after a few days of building your resources back up, you have a run of good luck, and after having a long chat with the pigmen (“FOOD GOOD”), you’re finally in that magical position in Don’t Starve, where you can explore. You set out with your log suit, a flowery head dress, a spear and some materials to build a fire, and you just walk to see what you can find. Without any pressing need, with no pull or push apart from your own curiosity, you aim for a dark spot on the map. You find some mermen, you watch herd of beefalo roam the plains, you find a garden gnome. Life is good.
Eventually when resources start to dwindle, and you can’t be apart from your local pigmen any longer you set off home, to start building up your base and getting ready for the harsh dryness of summer. These trips are the Don’t Starve equivalent to a weekend away, of seeing somewhere new and trying a food you’ve never had before. The exploration is why I play Don’t Starve, and it doesn’t seem like it is something 2020 will be giving me an anytime soon.
You can send me pictures of your favorite pigmen on Twitter or at jim123loomis@gmail.com
Images taken from Official Site or Fandom Wiki.
