In early 2012, a mod for Arma II called DayZ was released. Two-and-a-half years later, its odd mixture of multiplayer, horror, and a need for players to keep themselves fed and watered, has given rise to the survival genre.

Let’s celebrate that genre.

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FUN FACT: it’s quite difficult for two or more people to starve in close proximity, because inevitably one will begin to eat the other. With that cheeriness in mind, I’m here to tell you that sign-ups are now open for the closed beta of top-down survive-’em-up Don’t Starve‘s to-be-free multiplayer component. You don’t even need to own Don’t Starve to apply, as those accepted will be given a limited version of the client that only allows for multiplayer. All you need to do is fill in this form and hope fate smiles upon you.

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Invisible Inc is a turn-based, grid-based, cyberpunkish stealth strategy game from Klei, creators of Don’t Starve and Mark of the Ninja. It’s about secret agents breaking into sinister corporations to steal cash and data. It’s about risking everything and losing everything, but then trying it all again because you’re damn sure you can do better. It’s out now on Steam Early Access, and I’ve spent the last couple of days sheltered within its billowing trenchcoat. … [visit site to read more]

Don’t Starve Together is the sort of stern instruction that was once delivered by frowning parents to their newly married offspring as they set out to find a partner for life. The ruddy-faced matron wouldn’t tell her son to make sure he wooed a girl who always washed behind the ears, and the cracked lips of an aged farmer would not part to instruct his daughters in the ways of romance and wedlock – instead, mother and father both would have one piece of advice. “When you settle down with a spouse and begin a life of your own, eternal bliss can be yours if you follow this advice – Don’t Starve Together.” Then they’d slip a withered turnip out of their breeches, pass it across and shut the door of the family home for good.

Don’t Starve’s upcoming multiplayer mode will allow you to relive the good old days with your own friends and it’ll be entering closed beta before September 23rd.

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Don’t Starve is an ingenious videogame title, if you think about it. It’s catchy, a quick summation of your goal in the game, and utterly indispensable life advice. Don’t Starve Together, then, is exactly what I’m going to tell my future children when I’m teaching them about the buddy system. I will follow that by handing them a copy of Lord of the Flies and saying, “Don’t reenact this,” before stranding them on an island for a couple days to find out which one is fit enough to be my favorite. Coincidentally, that’s more or less how I expect Don’t Starve Together to unfold, albeit with slightly less confusing advice given out upfront.

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Are you starving for more Don’t Starve? Do you long to sink your teeth into more juicy, wholesome content and suck the marrow from its bones like the thirstiest of draculas? Then you’re in luck. After a brief Steam Early Access testing period, the brilliantly quirky survival adventure’s Reign of Giants DLC expansion is now available on Steam proper. Venture below for a new trailer, but beware: unspeakable terrors lurk in RPS’ whispering woods. We’ve got evil trees, deerclops, notorious human hunter Adam Smith – all of it. Proceed at your own risk.

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Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the beta of an expansion! Honking great giant beasts are now stomping merrily around Don’t Starve as its expansion Reign of the Giants is out in beta on Steam Early Access. No, I hadn’t realised DLC could be released that way either.

As one would expect and fear from an endless nightmare where the only release is sweet merciful death, Reign of the Giants adds a few more survival tools but mostly new ways to die horribly.

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The 2014 IGF Awards have finished and the winners have been announced, but we still have insights to share. Before reading on, you should relive John’s liveblogging of the IGF Awards ceremony so that you can see if Klei’s Jamie Cheng left the event happy. Don’t Starve received a nomination for the Grand Prize but Cheng was backing a different game – a game that he describes as ‘a masterpiece.>

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It’s been nearly a week since Klei ROCKED THE HEADLINES by changing its turn-based strategy stealth game’s name from Incognita to Invisible, Inc. “What could it possibly mean?” nearly every human on Earth pondered simultaneously. Then they all caught the hidden pun, embedded with a deadly precision, and chuckled in perfect harmony. With that blanket of sound covering their actions, Klei quickly slipped all sorts of new features into the rechristened game before anybody even knew what hit them. They thought they got away with it, but I knew what was up. I tracked designers James Lantz and Jason Dreger back to Klei’s secret cyber-noir rooftop lair and forced them to divulge secrets about the new name, the game’s (some would say) too-high difficulty, plans for upping replayability, how much content will be in the final game, and when Klei’s hoping to release it for real. All that and more is below. >

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To those who haven’t invested tens of hours in Don’t Starve and uncovered every last one of its randomized secrets, it may seem like an endless onslaught of hungry, hungry horrors. Some people, however, have ventured deep into its howling forests and emerged with their stomach linings largely intact. They want more. They need> more. One might say they are starving for more Don’t Starve. I wouldn’t, because I’m better than such an easy joke. You, though? Well, I won’t judge. At any rate, those people will get their wish soonishly when Klei unleashes Don’t Starve’s first major DLC expansion: Reign of Giants.

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