Living with Osteoporosis

I talk to Winchester resident, Elizabeth Tipple about her Osteoporosis, a disease that affects bones, causing them to become brittle and break more easily.

Editor Interview: Neil McCaw, Vortex Magazine

I Interview the Editor Of Winchester University's Vortex Magazine, Neil McCaw:

Don't Starve - A Review

You wake up in strange place. A gangly man named Maxwell appears and tells you that you don't look so good. He suggests you find some food before nightfall. You forage some berries, you collect sticks, you pull up some grass, you find some flint. You fashion a makeshift axe and cut down a tree. You build yourself a pickaxe and break apart some rocks. You find golden nuggets and craft them into a science machine (of course). You craft a spear and hunt down some nearby spiders. If you get hurt you chew on glands pulled out of their bodies. This helps a little. Night falls and you build a fire. You see eyes staring at you from the darkness. You decide to cut down a nearby tree to build up the fire. The tree comes to life and hits you as a gigantic eyeball runs past on two skinny legs. You die. Maxwell smiles.

"I want to play a game..."

Welcome to Don't Starve, perhaps a more apt name would simply be Don't Die. This is a game that wants to kill you in any and every way it can. It wants to make you dare to hope that you can survive everything it can throw at you. You'll begin with all the confidence that you can have in a brave new world, teeming with possibilities. Good luck with that, and let the games begin.

Just wait until your beard catches fire.

First things first, you must not starve. How do you do that? Well you collect food so that you Don't Starve, and then you make tools that help you find food so that you Don't Starve, and then You explore and find new technology to create better ways to make food so that you Don't Starve. Building a fire is an absolute must, without fire you cannot cook, and without its light you simply wont survive, stand in the darkness and you wont walk out.

This is not a forgiving game. You can plough hours into it, gaining a better foothold against a world that simply does not want you in it, only to be killed by a swarm of bees when you try and steal their honey. When you die, your game is over and there is no way to go back. You can start again and redo the tearjerkingly tedious tasks that you must go through in order to start the game, or you can quit and vow never to play this sadistic torture simulator ever again. Until you can't help but try again. In each new game, you improve and learn better ways to survive. You'll learn the best ways to speed into success until you think that this time will be the time that you win, but the thing about Don't Starve is that there is no particular goal other than sheer bloody-minded survival.

Treeguards:
Some Evergreens don't take kindly to being chopped down.

Perhaps the most impressive and oppressive part of Don't Starve is the Winter. Every 20 in-game days, the seasons will turn and colours become washed out, snow falls, and no food grows. This is where Don't Starve comes into its own. The difficulty ramps up a notch, then another 10 notches just for good measure. The cold becomes more likely to kill you then anything else. Wearing warm clothes will stave off the cold for a time, until it creeps in and drastic measures may have to be taken. Setting fire to a tree in desperation may be your only option, but don't be surprised if you start a forest fire in the process, wiping out any firewood for in the vicinity, which brings us back to the cold and the dark.

This is not a game for the faint-hearted or those short of patience. It wont hold your hand and tell you what to do, and while it is full of little victories, there are always demoralising defeats. It starts off slowly and tortuously, and only becomes harder as you go on. It will force you to learn, to adapt, to try out new things that might, and probably will, kill you. But if you don't try them your apathy will kill you just as readily.

Or spiders... Probably spiders.

The Gothic art style will charm and immerse you. The dark humour will cut away at the bleakness. And sometimes it wont be quite as lonely. You might make friends with some pigs who will follow and protect you, buoying your spirits with the occasional “I love friend!”. They are not clever pigs, but if you feed them, they will come, just be careful not to get them killed.

It is also worth noting that the team behind Don't Starve, Klei Entertainment, have promised to continue to update the game with new features, monsters, and mechanics for several months past the original launch on April 23. This should serve to keep the game that much more interesting every month or so. This helps somewhat with fears that the game might stagnate after a time.

Don't Starve is a commitment. It takes time to get to grips with the mechanics and learn its secrets and you will have to spend a long time grinding away at the same frustrating errands over and over again. If you want a game of volatile action and thrilling cut scenes, then this is not for you. If you want a game of innovation, constant tension and genuine fear, then step right up. Maxwell is waiting.

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 Pictures courtesy of Klei Entertainment.

 Thanks to Corey Rollins of Klei Entertainment.

News Day - 22 March 2013