Review: Don't Starve (PS4)

The nominations are in and the finalists have been officially selected for the 2013 Canadian Videogame Awards. This year, the fifth for the relatively young award ceremony, is quite a bit different. Reboot Communications and EP Media are moving the show this year from Vancouver FanExpo, where it's traditionally been held, to Toronto but recently delayed the production to the fall where the 2013 awards will be announced alongside (but separately from) the 2014 awards as w

Playing as both Naiee and Nayaa, who are mapped to the left and right analogue sticks (or keyboard), players partake on a journey to retrieve a medicine that will make your ill father better. What ensues is a dark fairy tale that starts off as a lighthearted adventure but takes a turn for death and depression. That isn't to say that the magical whimsy ever disappears as the brothers traverse some gorgeously dark locations that are brilliantly desig

It's a lovely day to go for a walk through the forest. The dark night has given way to a clear morning and I've been toiling over the fire to cook up food and spending a little time with the alchemy engine to get a shopping list of parts, because keeping busy is a good way to preserve sanity while waiting for the dawn to come. Charcoal for a boomerang, spider web for a bug net, spider organs and ash for healing salve, and general scavenging to keep food supplies from draining too low will fill up the new day nicely.

And then you get cocky and decide to attack the wrong monster. Or an unexpected swarm of bats invades the camp, or a surprise tentacle in the swamp, or maybe you weren't quite so prepared for winter as you thought you were. Death isn't truly inevitable, but it's going to take a whole lot of dying to learn how not to do it any more. Then it's time to choose who you want to play as this time, roll up a new world, and start all over again with, hopefully, a better plan.

Proteus came out way back in January and thus, has probably been forgotten by some as one of the best experiential games of the year. This game is the most, for want of a better word, 'arty' on this list and it's another example of a game that has come under fire for 'not being a game'. But if you can open your mind enough, Proteus is one of the best audio/visual experiments we've seen in a long t

Don’t Starve placed players into the shoes of a scientist named Wilson, and tasked them with a single mission: to survive. Unfortunately, mere survival itself is an extremely difficult task in Don’t Starve , with players having to overcome nightmarish creatures and a myriad of challenges. The crafting-focused title gives plenty of ways to kill a player, and savvy users need to look out for Wilson’s health, hunger, and sanity at all ti

There are a lot of different things that can be sold throughout town, and plenty of useful items that can be bought in different stores, as well. Keep an eye out for things you need; sometimes it's a lot easier to buy something than it is to craft it outri

Players should not get too attached to the characters on show, however. Death in Fire Emblem is a huge ordeal to overcome, as the defeat of a character means that they will not return for any future battles – a particularly terrifying prospect when a gamer has spent untold hours training them up. Although some games in the series have offered a more lenient approach to character death, the threat of a mortality is still a very present dan

Anybody who's made it past the first couple days of Don't Starve knows to grab flint , and a lot of it. But in Hamlet, flint doesn't seem to be as readily available. Don't worry, it's not rare, just hidden. There will be quite a few rocks that you can flip scattered around the new SLG game Money guide-world, and underneath can be any number of things — one of the most useful being fl

After a few games and a few deaths, however, the pace of play picks up because experience is at work teaching you what to do. Gather resources like flowers, grass, twigs, rocks, berries, and carrots as quick as possible. Craft flint and twigs into an axe and harvest trees. Plant the pine cones to replenish the tree supply and combine the wood and some rocks into a fire pit, which will eventually be the centerpiece of home base. Spend every second of the first few days putting that base together and then start budgeting time between resource gathering and exploring the wide-open world. While that sounds a lot like work it's actually a rewarding kind of fun, once you get the taste for it.

Have a bunch of Oincs but don't know what to do with them? Ever thought of settling down in a nice Hamlet? Well, today's your lucky day! Visit your local Town Hall, and for the low price of 50 Oincs, you can become a permanent resid

To paint a picture in your head tonally, the game is a little like if Portal and the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy got together to talk about the relationship between gamers and game developers. It is easily one of the funniest and insightful gaming experiences you could have this y