Halloween Meltdown ’13: Don’t Starve

As usual, I’m late to the party on this one. While not explicitly about Halloween, Don’t Starve is a fun little Minecraft-esque grindy/harvesty indie title that lets you run around (for a while) in a weird, monochromatic cartoon world. The art is very Tim Burtony, and the music is pleasingly waltzy. You need to harvest resources and build stuff to help you stay alive, AND you need to attend to your character’s ever-increasing hunger. AND you need to worry about going insane, because there are monsters and shit that freak your guy right the hell out.

Be warned, however: this game is maddeningly addictive, and incredibly frustrating. You will die. You will die a lot. Oh, you just built a house after ages of chopping/mining/other mindless harvesting activity? BOOM: lightning bolt, sucka. Oh, you built your house of stone so it won’t burn? Freakin’ WEREWOLVES.

Seriously, my last game I was doing SO WELL, and I retreated into my nice stone house when night fell, thinking I was safe. AND THEN A GODDAMNED PACK OF WEREWOLVES CAME AND DESTROYED MY HOUSE AND KILLED ME. AHHHHHH.

So, er, fair warning.

Don’t Starve is on sale for 50% off as of this writing. See the official site, or check it out on Steam.

Scapegoats ‘R Us

Oh, conservatives (and a handful of liberals). When will you learn?

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” you mumble. “Blame the games. Games make people violent.”

[Despite my best efforts, I can’t get the embed code for this Colbert clip to work–so here’s the link: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425350/april-10-2013/tip-wag—gun-edition—united-nations–senate-republicans—video-games%5D

This argument used to make me angry. Now it just makes me laugh nervously, like when I’m at a store and somebody’s kid knocks over a display of Cheerios and then screams about wanting ice cream, and I want to say something but I’m worried their parent might be a gun-packing conservative.