There were many points which attracted players to Dont Starve, but it all cos back to the Survival aspect.
According to Maslows hierarchy of needs theory, needs are divided into five major categories: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
The five needs form a pyramid, with the most bottom playing being physiological, and self-actualization on the top.
The lower the need, the easier it is to realise, but also the most important and urgent.
That ans if a person lacked food, safety, and esteem, they should feel the strongest for food. In that mont, safety and esteem wouldnt be as important.
This was why under incredible food stress, humans would hunt large beasts (giving up safety) or beg for food (give up esteem).
Maslows hierarchy of needs can also be applied to different industries, including video gas.
Many ga designers build the complete hierarchy of Maslows needs in the ga, using to drive players to chase fictional numbers in the ga, and be so imrsed they cant stop themselves.
A simple example would be pay to win gas that sell strength, which focused on safety and esteem in the hierarchy of needs.
The weaker players would face the danger of being killed every mont they are in ga. As they face a lack of safety, this drives them to spend more ti and money in ga in order to regain safety,
The stronger players on the other hand have a certain amount of safety, so they pivot to chase the needs in esteem or self-actualization, such as taking from the others, forming a guild, gathering this underlings to battle others as they fork out more and more money just to chase the high.
Normally, very few gas reach the physiological needs level on the pyramid as it was difficult to develop, and didnt fit into a majority of gas.
The physiological needs of humans are quite simple, consisting of food, water, health, and reproduction. However, gas wouldnt usually have their players run around to gather food or water. They usually wouldnt have hunger in the ga as they could only fit in so much content in the ga, with better ways to spend the ti of the players.
Dont Starve exploits this oversight, conveying all aspects of survival.
Moreover, Dont Starve wasnt just a simple ga. As one delved deeper into the gaplay, they will realise that there was a lot of content in the ga.
It was different from many main characters with huge motivations. Wilsons existence was just for himself, he didnt need to save the world or save others. His only aim was to survive, and everything he does in the world of Dont Starve was literally just that.
Dont Starve is a highly stylized ga with a very mature mindset.
The world of Dont Starve wasnt well realised nor have a deep story, it could even be said that it escaped reality. The art style and music was filled with dark humour, yet feeled incredibly real in the face of death.
The feeling of absurdity and reality runs through the Dont Starve, which is strengthened when combined with technology and magic in the ga.
Living moving robots, pigs living in groups, tombstones in forests, remains of the ones who ca before, horrible monsters These scary settings may seem unrelated at first glance, but were closely related upon deeper inspection.
The world was a highly integrated unique magical world.
And Dont Starves lifespan ca from its rich content. It may seem like a simple 2D ga, but it was more playable than so large works.
The mobs were really complicated, each mob provided unique food items and resources which the main character could utilize using campfires, drying racks, crockpots and traps.
Moreover, there were many things the character could interact with, harvesting by hand, chopping, mining, digging, lighting, planting The players could interact with anything, including the map itself. Precious materials could also be used as fuel in a ti of need.
There are also various materials the players could obtain. If the player wanted so pigskin, they could go head to head against the pigs, or they could look for abandoned pig houses, using the altar, or planting spider dens near pig houses and let the spider kill the pigs for the players.
And when the players get gathered as much as they need and start losing interest in the survival mode, when the players lose interest in trying to survive, the players will discover a whole new challenge in adventure mode.
Moreover, it was also a cool emotionless ga mode, any oversight could lead to unrecoverable consequences in the face of survival.
And so, survival becos more and more desired. When the players will get a huge sense of bliss as they find a patch of carrots and berries in front of a pig village.
Many players only realise how good it was to have a full stomach after playing Dont Starve.
And it was because of this that Dont Starve was able to attract so many players who were interested in surival gas and retain their hardcore players. There were even players who werent even close to getting bored of the ga a few years in.
It was because every playthrough of Dont Starve was a different journey.
Moreover, like many sandbox gas, mods were the core of the longevity of a ga like Dont Starve.
Setting aside official DLCs, the players could also find a lot fun in mods they create themselves.
Character mods for example, One Piece characters such as Zoro (has their own blade, can cut trees, no sense of direction, map is always dark), and Ace(has fireball, regains sanity next to fire) were created. Assistant mods included more, better description, building guides, functional mods included permanent tents, expanded backpacks
There were also large scale mods such as Hero in the Dark, which had enough content to last players half a year. These large scale mods could almost be considered their own ga.
Of course, Chen Mo decided to create just a few of these more common mods that dont affect the gaplay much, leaving the other mods up to the players.
This was the nature of sandbox gas, only when the players play their part will the gas full potential be realised.
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