"Harvest Moon" by Franz Kafka
You can farm, tinker, invent, learn and cook recipes, bask in nature's local bounty, mine, experience realistic day and night cycles, befriend indigenous species, and much, much more while the Sword of Damocles chills out a few feet above your head at all times. The game is called Don't Starve. You're awoken on what you discover to be an island by a Vince Price-lookin' dude who has two sentences for you:
"Say pal, you don't look so good. You should find something to eat before night comes."
Aaaand you're off to the races. No tutorial, no exposition. All you've got to go on are two smarmy lines from an obvious antagonist and a blunt game title. And it's perfect. The game is blanketed in random cruelty and peppered with moments of genuine self-satisfaction as you struggle to understand and adapt to the strange playgrounds Klei drops you into.
Don't Starve most obviously panders to the most masochistic gamers, but it also gives you the ability to alter the settings of your generated game world, allowing you to subtract nearly all especially dangerous creatures and fill the thing with a ridiculous amount of resources (or alternatively, up the frequency of horrible monsters, shorten the safety of daylight, or rid the land of naturally-growing produce because you hate yourself).
The game is exactly what you make of it. The Burton-esque art-style, wonderfully creative ecosystems, constant sense of dread, and sheer fun of a sandbox that trivializes death are difficult to ignore for the piddling price.
There is a great amount of fun to be had with Don't Starve. The atmosphere is final, the narrative is appropriately minimal, the combat is janky, and the freedom seems infinite. The lore of the game-world is enough to keep you fascinated, but the true glee is to be found in a rich cast of characters that can be dropped into an equally vague, spartan circumstance that forces you to build a unique narrative using the simple, self-generated mechanics that are present from the moment Maxwell wakes you up. In short; it's addictive, inexpensive fun with excellent replay value, a distinctive soundtrack, and tons of personality. Absolutely worth your time.
Don't forget about holding space bar, you'll get a lot done really quickly.
