Don't Starve Together
Klei Entertainment · Survival, Indie, Open World
Overview
Fight, Farm, Build and Explore Together in the standalone multiplayer expansion to the uncompromising wilderness survival game, Don't Starve.
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Enter a strange and unexplored world full of odd creatures, hidden dangers, and ancient secrets. Gather resources to craft items and build structures that match your survival style. Play your way as you unravel the mysteries of "The Constant".
Cooperate with your friends in a private game, or find new friends online. Work with other players to survive the harsh environment, or strike out on your own.
Do whatever it takes, but most importantly, Don't Starve.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Don't Starve Together is a game players keep for years. Playing with friends, partners and family comes up more than anything else, often described as chaotic, funny sessions where everyone dies together. Reviewers also love the hand-drawn gothic art and music, and long-time players credit the studio with about a decade of free content, events and character reworks. Players with hundreds or thousands of hours are a big presence on the review page, and a few say they update the same review every year to add what changed. Price comes up as well: reviewers say the game is often on deep sale and comes with a second copy to give a friend.
The catch is the start. Reviewers say the game explains almost nothing, and that warning turns up in positive and negative reviews alike: new players die to things they never saw coming, lose a base to a seasonal boss, and only make progress once they open the wiki or a YouTube guide. Plenty of fans treat that learning by dying as part of the fun. Others, including couples and friend groups who bought it together, give up early. Smaller groups of reviewers raise other problems: input delay for anyone who is not hosting, slow world loading, stiff combat, bosses with health pools built for groups, and, among some veterans, a sense that recent updates lean too hard on boss fights and skill trees.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Playing with friends, partners and familyHigh
No topic comes up more often. Reviewers describe years-long sessions with siblings, partners, children and friends in other countries ("Perfect for me since i can still play it with my friends even if we're half a globe away"), and much of what they enjoy is the chaos: a friend burns down the base, someone eats all the food, a group of four still dies before day five and laughs about it. Many of the shortest positive reviews say little more than that it is best with friends. The game leans on having that group, though, and solo players and buyers without one feel it (covered below).
Art style, music and atmosphereHigh
Reviewers regularly compare the look to Tim Burton, and the art gets praise even in some negative reviews ("I like the art style and sound design. But I don't understand what and how to do"). Players single out the creepy-cute creatures, the animation, the soundtrack and the character voices played on instruments, and several say the style is what made them buy it in the first place.
Depth, variety and replay valueHigh
Reviewers praise how much there is to do: random worlds, seasons that each need their own preparation, caves, ruins, oceans and boats, farming, cooking, a long string of bosses, and lore to dig into. Some say that hundreds of hours in they are still finding new systems. Minecraft and Terraria come up often, usually to say this is the same kind of game made much harder. One reviewer said it "Gives more time for $15 then any other game".
A decade of free updates and a studio that caresHigh
Long-time players often credit years of free updates, which they say brought new characters, character reworks, skill trees, seasonal events and new areas without paid expansions. "Klei have seriously put passion into this game for the past 10 years and it shows." Some veterans dislike the direction those updates have taken (covered under the split topics below).
A cast of characters that play very differentlyMedium
Players often name favorite characters (Wendy, Wolfgang, Webber, Wormwood, Wortox, Wurt, WX-78, Wigfrid and more) and like that each one changes how a run plays, from Webber living with spiders to Wolfgang's strength or Wurt's merms. Character reworks and skill trees get specific praise from returning players. Some reviewers add that the characters are uneven: "Some of the characters are extremely useful, while others are barely useless."
Mods and world settings let players tune the gameMedium
The Steam Workshop is a frequent selling point: players add quality-of-life tweaks, bigger storage, custom characters, and balance changes for solo play. World settings get similar praise, since players can turn off hound attacks, frog rain or summer fires, or play in Endless or Relaxed mode. One reviewer's advice to their past self was to play on Endless and "disable or reduce annoying things like hound attacks, frog rains, random fire in summer etc." Some reviewers frame mods as necessary rather than optional ("mods are needed"), which ties back to the learning-curve complaints.
Cheap, often on sale, with a free copy to shareMedium
Reviewers point out the frequent deep sales and the extra gift copy they say comes with a purchase: "the game goes on sale Constant-ly, and you get a free bonus copy to play with your friends". A few players complain about regional pricing, saying it costs more in their part of the world than elsewhere.
Farming, cooking and smaller systemsLow
The reworked farming system, cooking in the crock pot, taming beefalo, pets like Chester and Glommer, and the daily free cosmetic drops each get scattered, warm mentions ("best farming system on steam").
Where players are split
Difficulty and learning by dyingHigh
Only playing with friends comes up more often than difficulty. Reviewers call the game hard, brutal, punishing or challenging, and many of them say so with affection ("Fun game with friends diffucult yet fun"). They describe a loop where each death teaches a lesson, and say that finally surviving a winter or killing a first boss feels earned: "Treat each death as a lesson, seeing what you did wrong and not doing it the next time." For others the same design is the reason to quit. They say death feels cheap, losing a whole world is too harsh ("Survival and permadeath are not two concepts that mix well"), and the game is built for people who already know it: "The game is clearly intended to be played by experienced players who want a high-stakes challenge". A few fans advise learning with a friend who already knows the game.
Solo play versus a full groupMedium
The game is fully playable alone, and many reviewers play mostly solo and love it. The split is over balance. Solo players and small groups complain that late bosses have health pools built for crowds, citing the Ancient Fuelweaver, Toadstool and the raid bosses: "I'm playing by myself, why does this boss have 100,000 HP?" Several use mods that scale boss health and ask for an official difficulty slider for bosses. Others prefer the original single-player Don't Starve for a solo run, while some say Together has replaced it because it gets all the updates.
The direction of updates: bosses, skill trees and late gameMedium
Veterans with long histories in the game are divided on what the updates have added. Supporters enjoy the new bosses, skill trees and endgame and say any feature they dislike can be switched off. Critics feel the game has moved from survival toward boss fights and MMO-style progression: "the game feels more like a bossrush game with ignorable survival mechanics loosely taped on." Specific grievances include skill trees that undercut core mechanics (characters ignoring darkness or turning magic trivial), new content locked to fresh worlds, and updates that break mods. A few ask for "more real content, not another skin pack."
Repetition and chores after masteryMedium
Some players hit a wall once they know the game: survival becomes routine, and what remains is base upkeep and long boss preparation. "We were always stuck doing endless chores at base and waiting for the night to end next to campfire." One veteran put the sweet spot narrowly: "you only experience the peak of the game in a fairly narrow window of time: after you escape noob hell (the game explains none of itself) and before you know TOO MUCH." Others in the same position say they keep returning for years and find new goals every time.
Cosmetics, spools and paid charactersLow
Daily free cosmetic gifts get warm mentions, and most players treat skins as harmless. A smaller group objects to the in-game shop and to newer characters that have to be bought or unlocked with spools earned through drops, with one player frustrated at the grind just "TO UNLOCK ONE SINGULAR CHARACTER AND START A RUN WITH THEM." A few want unwanted items to be easier to delete or sell.
Public servers and strangersLow
Some reviewers describe kind strangers who taught them the game and became friends. Others describe griefers burning down shared bases, hosts who kick or ban new arrivals, and server lists crowded with heavily modded or private worlds with high ping, and some say they moved to Discord groups or private servers.
What frustrates players
The game teaches almost nothing, so the wiki becomes requiredHigh
No complaint comes up more: 19% of negative reviews blame the difficulty, the lack of explanation or the need for a guide, and the same warning appears in many positive reviews too. New players say they had no idea what to do, how to revive a friend, or why something killed them: "This game doesn't explain itself in the very slightest, and I just felt utterly lost throughout my whole attempt at playing this." Recommendations often come with homework ("I'd recommend just watching a quick beginner's survival guide on YouTube"), and critics call it "Terraria but u have to read the entirety of the wiki before playing" or simply "It became a wiki game". Many of these reviews come from new players, including couples and friend groups who bought the game together and gave up early.
Punishing setbacks: base raids, fires and revivalMedium
Many stories, often told as jokes, end with a lost base: Deerclops or Bearger flattening walls, the Antlion breaking crock pots, summer wildfires, hound waves that return to the spawn point, frog rain and earthquakes. Fans enjoy the chaos, but newcomers describe losing hours of progress to threats they never saw coming. Revival also gets complaints, from walking back as a ghost to the health penalty that comes with some revival methods.
Stiff combatMedium
Combat is click-to-attack with kiting, and a recurring group of players finds it clunky: unclear hitboxes, swarms that stunlock, and bosses that come down to memorized attack timings. One reviewer who does not recommend the game warned: "If you don't enjoy the combat, you won't enjoy the game".
Lag, slow loading and crashesMedium
Players who are not hosting describe input delay that makes fights and dodging unreliable: "there is usually a 1-2 second delay between your click and the actual movement unless you are the host". Players in Asia and other regions far from common servers ask for local servers. Others report long waits to create or join worlds ("It took me over 3.5 minutes to join a game with my partner"), high memory use ("I've never seen a game as system ram hungry as dst in my life."), disconnects, and crashes, most often when outdated mods stop a server from launching.
Finding someone to play withMedium
A steady stream of reviews, many of them jokes ("Better with friends, and I have none."), shares the same problem: the game is built around a group, and the group does not always stay. Buyers describe friends who never launched it, or who quit after the first winter. "My biggest gripe with this game is finding friends who enjoy it."
No split-screen on PCLow
A small group of reviewers wanted couch co-op, and several had bought the game expecting it: "Playing with friends online works just fine but why doesnt it have split screen?" Some say the console versions offer local play, and one parent wants it so they don't have to borrow a child's PlayStation to play with their partner.
Smaller platform gaps: achievements, controllers, displaysLow
Several players ask for Steam achievements. Others report patchy controller support (no PlayStation controller, no hybrid keyboard and controller play), trouble setting frame rates on high-refresh monitors, and keyboard input that fails in some menus. A few mention that online play asks players to enable data collection, and isolated reviews mention Mac or Steam Deck setup trouble.
One click away from losing a worldLow
A few players lost long-running worlds to the "Regenerate world" button: "The button that deletes your save (regenerate) is right next to the rollback button". Others add that there is no easy backup of a world.
3. The player conversation
The tone is warm and often affectionate. A large share of reviews are one-liners and memes about starving, dying to frogs or trees, a favorite character, or still being lost after years of play ("I have no idea what I'm doing"). The longer reviews come from two very different groups. Veterans, some with thousands of hours across PC and consoles, write long, nostalgic recommendations, and a minority of them voice disappointment about the boss-heavy direction of updates, mod breakage, or lag. Many of the short complaints come from newcomers who bought it with a partner or friends, could not work out what to do, and stopped.
Weekly positive shares mostly sit between the mid-80s and mid-90s across the years covered. The late-November 2025 spike leaned toward players with long histories in the game, some of them praising the free updates. The June and July 2026 wave barely moved the positive share. The open arguments are about whether the game should do more to welcome new players, and how far updates should push toward boss fights.
4. What the developers could do
- Add a guided start or an optional tutorial world. Not knowing what to do is the most frequent complaint and a common reason first-time groups quit, and even fans recommend outside guides before playing.
- Explain threats and recovery in game. Players lose bases and runs to seasonal bosses, hounds, fires and frog rain they never saw coming, and ask how to revive a friend; warnings and in-game hints would cut many of these cheap deaths.
- Reduce input delay and loading times for non-host players. Lag for anyone not hosting, regional ping, and multi-minute world creation and joining are the technical problems reviewers raise most, and some long-time players cite them as reasons they stopped playing.
- Offer official boss scaling for solo players and small groups. Solo players say late bosses with huge health pools are effectively locked away from them and fix it with mods, asking for a difficulty slider instead.
- Balance new late-game content with survival and ecosystem updates. Veterans who criticize recent updates say bosses and skill trees have crowded out the survival sandbox, while players ask for more content and fewer skin packs.
- Protect worlds and mods from accidental loss. A confirmation on "Regenerate world", easy world backups, and a check that flags outdated mods before a server fails to launch would prevent losses reviewers describe.
- Add PC split-screen and Steam achievements. Both are small but recurring requests, and several split-screen reviews come from buyers who expected couch co-op on PC.
