Don't Starve Together

Most of the time I've spent with Don't Starve to date has been vicarious; charming as it is, the Tim Burton aesthetic never quite clicked with me, and the gameplay was just a little too punishing; I prefer my games with a little more direction included, or at least some kind of instruction beyond the title, even if it's as simple as No Man's Sky's "reach the center of the galaxy at some point".

My wife and her sister, however, meshed immediately, so I've spent uncounted hours sitting on the sofa with Winston or Wendy or Woodie tramping around the procedural landscape, offering advice, if not assistance.

But now Don't Starve Together has launched on PlayStation 4, and I'm pitching in to "help".

The fundamentals remain unchanged: dumped in an unforgiving world, players have to gather resources to survive, fighting off the titular starvation, as well as darkness, cold, occasional monster attacks, and frequently their own insanity. Not everything is the same, however.

I've only seen much of the vanilla game, so I don't know how many of these adjustments have been carried over from the other expansions, but immediately things seem tougher: rabbits, which could once be stored indefinitely while alive, now degrade over time, even in traps, lending additional urgency to food gathering, and hanging another threat over our heads as we face the onset of winter.

There's also the fact that you now have up to six (splitscreen or online) mouths to feed, instead of just yourself; even with only three playing, the rabbit and berry-bush populations took a sudden, precipitous dive on our arrival, and gathering the resources for everyone to eat, set up our first camp, and arm ourselves against the world's threats quickly became a serious logistical challenge. By the end of our first in-game week, all three of us were beginning to suffer - and not just because of my ill-fated attempt at hunting a Koalephant.

When a character dies - and sooner or later, someone will - they appear in the game as a ghost, and can wander around the landscape saying "ooOOo!" at everything, or even haunt objects (though if this has any effect beyond making them glow for a few seconds, we've yet to uncover it). They can either respawn themselves by finding a Touchstone, or surviving players can sacrifice a portion of health, along with a couple of other ingredients, to resurrect them.

That loss of health has to be weighed up against not only the extra help that another player provides, but the continuous drain on surviving players' sanity caused by the loss of a trap-setting dogsbody such a close and dear friend.

As before, survival is largely its own reward, with the day counter acting as a kind of highscore - but if you need extra incentive, players are awarded a prize box every couple of hours, containing various bits of clothing to dress your character in: things like gloves, shirts, trousers - helpful to differentiate you from any other Winstons who might be wandering the wilderness.

One of the first choices you have to confront is which of the characters you want to play. I've stuck with Winston so far, but finding synergy between characters' abilities and quirks may well prove the key to long-term survival.

The longest we've lasted in our few hours' play to date is about ten days, but we're learning - slowly feeling out the limits of the systems, trying to plan a few steps ahead, but always kept on the back foot by a hostile environment.

It's basically more of the same, then - but it's more of the same with friends, and that's rarely a bad thing.