The "interesting social dynamics" of Don't Starve Together

We caught up with Klei Entertainment's Seth Rosen to discuss the standalone multiplayer expansion of Don't Starve called Don't Starve Together (currently in Early Access).

"Don't Starve Together is our standalone expansion for Don't Starve," says designer Rosen who joined Klei from Irrational Games around 1.5 years ago. "So if you've played Don't Starve it really is by and large the same game. It's a wilderness survival game with a procedurally generated world and permadeath, although because it's a co-operative game, well, mostly co-operative game not strictly, if you die you now turn into a ghost and your friends have a chance to sort of resurrect you. It's only when the entire group dies that you truly fail and the world gets wiped and you have to start again."

"We have a couple of different game modes," says Rosen. "One of them is like for small groups playing co-operatively and that mostly plays out like Don't Starve. People do co-operate. But then we have a mode called Wilderness which is more like the experience you see in DayZ where you kind of spawn by yourself and you're roaming around the world, doing your thing, trying to survive, and you happen across someone else. And you don't know if they're going to be friendly or if they're going to be aggressive. And it's kind of this moment of tension when you don't know what's going to happen and the social dynamics that are really interesting."

Rosen also mentioned that Klei are looking into bringing Don't Starve Together onto PlayStation platforms (Don't Starve is available on PS4 and PS Vita).