Almighty Video Game Designer

“What? Why is it walking on its hind legs!”

Jia Peng equipped his axe as he thought about hacking away at the pig to see if it drops meat.

But in the same moment, night approached.

Wilson muttered to himself, “It’s getting late. It will be dark soon.”

The pig also said, “HOME TIME!”

The pig then returned to its house and stayed inside.

All Jia Peng could do was watch this happen.

Jia Peng decided to forget about this pig who walked on its hind legs and continued wandering.

The night was approaching and his vision was reducing.

Jia Peng looked at the time indication on the top right nervously.

There were three zones in the dial for time. The largest yellow zone was for day, orange for dusk, and grey was signified night.

It was now dusk, light started to get scarce but there was still time before night.

Jia Peng continued picking away at boulders while contemplating what to do during the night.

“Normally I’d have to build a house or something right? But obviously I can’t build one now, but there has to be something I can do.

“I should eat a few berries to replenish my hunger first.”

Soon, night approached and the entire screen turned dark.

Although Jia Peng didn’t know if there was a side-effect to being in the dark without a fire, he still instinctively crafted a torch.

With a torch in hand, Wilson can continue on his merry way in darkness.

The torch produced a very limited radius of light and its health bar was decreasing rapidly.

“Hmm? I can light trees on fire too?”

Jia Peng hovered over nearby trees to realise he could right click them to light them on fire.

Jia Peng tried it out, and sure enough the whole tree caught on fire. It even spread to another nearby tree.

The fire even caught Wilson the firebug on fire, taking away some of his health.

This gave Jia Peng a shock, but he soon calmed down after realizing it wasn’t a big deal.

After a few moments, the tree stopped burning leaving behind two blackened trees.

Jia Peng enjoyed that process and proceeded to burn down all the trees he came across.

After setting a few more trees on fire, Jia Peng realised that his torch ran out. He then switched to his axe and started chopping away at the burnt trees.

“Hmm? It dropped two pieces of charcoal! That’s a thing?”

Jia Peng quickly picked up the charcoal. Although he didn’t know what use it had, based on the game so far, all resources have its uses. It might now have a use now, but it would surely come in the future.

And just like that, the first night ended, followed by the auto-saving of the game.

Jia Peng breathed out a sigh of relief as he managed to survive the first night.

Although the nights were tense, limited the players’ vision, and had a spooky background music, there wasn’t much to fear about the night. As it was his first time, it was normal for him to feel nervous.

Although his first day was a bit pitiful as he fueled himself on berries, he gathered a lot of resources, managing to fill up two thirds of his inventory.

After going through the first night, he realised how precious daytime was. Jia Pengsat up straight ready for another day of exploration.

After a lot of exploration, Jia Peng heard pigs from far away.

Jia Peng controlled Wilson to head in the direction of the sound to find more pigs walking on their hind legs. But this time, it wasn’t just one, there were many.

The pigs were running around fighting against Merms.

“You’re done for!”

“Us pigs will have a feast!”

“Ahhh!”

There were around ten monsters in this area split into two teams. The pigs and the merms were swinging punches at one another. These monsters looked huge, much stronger than Wilson. Combined with the sounds of the punches, the situation felt really dangerous.

“What’s going on? Why are they fighting? Please don’t hit me, I’m just passing by.”

Jia Peng’s first reaction was to run away. With so many strong monsters in the area, he’d probably die in a few seconds.

But the desire to watch how this would turn out overwhelmed his fear.

“I’m not encouraging, I’m just watching, ” Jia Peng carefully parked himself at the edge of the confrontation to watch the battle.

The mobs didn’t even bat an eye to Wilson as they were fully involved in the battle.

A merm let out a final scream before dying, leaving behind the frog’s legs and a fish.

“Hmm?!”

This caught Jia Peng’s attention, he’d have to grab the meat after eating berries for a whole day!

Moreover, the mobs seemed to be occupied by the battle, they won’t notice me right?

Jia Peng slowly walked towards the frog legs.

“Nice, I got it!”

Jia Peng backed off after grabbing the legs. However, he soon realised that his worries weren’t needed as the mobs didn’t even seem to notice him.

Jia Peng checked out the stats of the frog legs, +12.5 hunger, -10 sanity.

“Why does it reduce sanity? Is it because it’s disgusting to eat it raw? I’ll save it for an emergency then.

Jia Peng had Wilson wander around this group of monsters, keeping his distance as he feared they would turn on him.

Soon, all the merms died and Jia Peng swooped in to pick up all the frog legs and fish.

“Wow, I can’t believe that worked!”

Jia Peng didn’t want to overstay his welcome either, leaving happily with frog legs in his inventory.

Jia Peng looked at his inventory satisfyingly.

“This game is actually quite fun.”

Jia Peng grabbed a drink before continuing his battle in Don’t Starve.

—

What Jia Peng had experienced so far was but only a small part of what Don’t Starve had to offer. He hadn’t even encountered complicated stuff like building bases, science machines, surviving summer and winter, and the hounds that come to visit periodically.

The difficulty of the game would continue to increase. New players who think they have the situation under control in particular are prone to having a game over in one single mistake.

However, Jia Peng already experienced the joy of the game in gathering and surviving.