Chapter 211: Incredibly Popular
Soon, reviews of Don’t Starve started popping up.
“I noticed that the game is actually really rich. Although I was a bit lost at the start, but you can’t stop once you get into it.”
“I was wondering how this could be a sandbox game with such a small game? Turns out Chen Mo actually managed to make a really rich sandbox game!”
“Am I the only one who died in the first night to darkness…”
“+1, first death was because of darkness, dying to unknown mobs. Second death was after ten days to hunger, third death was on day 11 killed by hounds during the night. For my fourth death, I caught a bird, found a pig village, fed spider flesh to one of them and started an alliance, started planning my future home, before becoming insane from too much spider flesh.”
“To be honest, this game is terrible for new players. There are so many dangers you could die any time!”
“There’s one thing you have to remember when playing this game: No zuo no die…[1]”
“The game is surprisingly good and addictive. But I have one question, how come there’s nothing coming out of me when I’m eating so much? Why do I have to pick up after other animals? I want it to be self sustaining!”
“It looks like a small game, but there’s a lot of good gameplay! You’d spend tens of hours just trying to learn the game, and you’ll experience many exciting things during that process! I think the best part of this game is that there’s no rule that the world has to follow, on the contrary, this allows them to create many different mobs, increasing the difficulty in the process!”
“To be honest, I’ve never starved to death. I don’t know why the game is called Don’t Starve, I think a better name for this game would be, ‘100 ways for Wilson to die’.
“I love this art style. Although it has a cartoony 2D art style, it’s quite refreshing when every other game is in 3D.
“Although it’s a small game, it’s a sincere one!”
“I realised Chen Mo allowed mods like he did for previous games. I’m thinking about making a mod, how does a character mod sound? I’ll import Arthas and his special ability will be eating corpses! Haha!”
“This game has a co-op mode too. It’s an incredible feeling to play with friends all as different characters, helping one another survive!”
—
Although Don’t Starve didn’t have a lot of downloads initially, it’s reviews were as high as 9.5!
It was because most players who bought Don’t Starve were Chen Mo’s fans, who usually liked sandbox survival games like these, naturally, these players gave Don’t Starve good reviews.
In the moments right after its release, Don’t Starve was still a niche game without large scale promotion. As it had a niche art style and gameplay, it wasn’t surprising that it didn’t receive explosive growth.
However, with Thunderbolt Gaming Platform and Chen Mo’s name on the line, Don’t Starve received a decent amount of sales at twenty-four thousand copies.
Moreover, this number was still increasing, estimated to sell two million copies in the first month.
Don’t Starve was a long-lasting game after all, and because of its distinct style and great reputation, it had huge potential for growth.
This number wasn’t comparable to Lifeline as it was twenty times more expensive, it was normal to have less sales.
In his previous life, Don’t Starve sold five million copies after making its debut in China. Of course Tencent Gaming Platform’s great distribution played a part, as well as its good review on Steam.
Chen Mo’s Don’t Starve was considered a completely new type of game in the parallel world, so it was normal that its first steps started off slow. Once the players go up, the game would finally reach its full potential.
There were various different reactions as the players noticed the sales and ratings.
“Hooray! I hoped to see the Chen Mo who made Plants vs Zombies, incredibly creative, rich play style, a small game like this can be a cla.s.sic game too! In my mind, this is the real Chen Mo!”
“Yeah, Chen Mo was wasting his potential making pay to win games!”
“I asked why Chen Mo wasn’t updating Diablo, but I have my answer. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Chen Mo, I’ll forgive you for making a game like Don’t Starve!”
“But it’s still kind of sad, you can’t replace the old with the new this soon, Diablo is still waiting for you!”
“Yeah, you have to think about the feelings of us Nephalem!”
“Warcraft players are shaking. It’s sad that there’s only one Chen Mo, how good would it be if there were more of him to make games!”
—
The players who liked Don’t Starve gave it a lot of praise.
The players who didn’t like it hoped Chen Mo would make other games.
Diablo players were still waiting for a DLC.
This was why Chen Mo hoped Chen Mo could create copies of himself to provide for all different types of player.
Chen Mo’s player base was now huge after developing so many games.
There were casual gamers who liked Plants vs Zombies and Lifeline.
Western Fantasy fans who liked Warcraft and Diablo.
Fans of Chinese themed games who like Wulin Legend.
And players who liked pay to win games like I am MT and Onmyoji.
It was hard to provide for everyone because of how different their tastes were. There was no way Chen Mo could make a game that covered all the bases either.
All these players could do was wait for Chen Mo’s next move.
—
Industry professionals paid more attention to Don’t Starve than the average player.
After Chen Mo developed Diablo to teach the ones who dismissed third person RPGs a lesson, n.o.body dared to underestimate Chen Mo again.
Every game Chen Mo released was something that was weird and completely different.
Such as the card game I am MT that was ‘completely free’.
Or the third person single player game Diablo.
But he was met with success every time, proving everything the industry professionals knew wrong.
n.o.body could deny the fact that Chen Mo hadn’t made any mistakes so far, and anyone who uses layman’s logic to explain his moves would inevitably fail.
TL note[1]: It’s a Chinese saying ‘No zuo no die, why you try?” basically meaning, you don’t have to do it, so why bother?