When comparing Darkwood vs Starbound, the Slant community recommends Starbound for most people. In the question“What are the best survival games on PC?” Starbound is ranked 4th while Darkwood is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Starbound is:
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Beautiful top down graphics that illustrate a creepy and murky world
Darkwood is a top down game that has dark murky graphics with misty fog that fit the mood really well and awesome lighting effects from the players flashlight.
Pro The random generation of the game makes it all the more terrifying, as you never know what will come next
The game is really dark, has a lot of atmospheric tension, and is randomly generated to keep it from being to predictable. This way the player never knows what will happen next, which ups the element of surprise by quite a lot.
Pro Extremely replayable thanks to the random generation of the game
The maps are randomly-generated, adding extra replayability value since you never know what you will find with every new game.
Pro Optional permadeath makes for an easier time for those that want it
If you die and don't want to start from the beginning losing all of your progress you don't have to.
Pro Immersive sound effects suits the game and its creepy environments well
Sound in horror games can really make the difference on whether it’s scary or not and Darkwood's has really awesome sound.
Pro Informative and well paced tutorials
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
Pro Incredibly deep gameplay
The exploration, crafting and combat are all both very polished and deep in terms of what you can do, especially compared to other games in the genre. This makes the sandbox very fun to play in as you're never really stuck doing the same thing over and over.
Pro Boss levels
For what is a procedurally generated game, Starbound offers boss levels that once beaten unlock new sectors of space to explore.
Cons
Con May start to feel extremely tedious
It's very hard to find valuable gear in this game. Most of the caches the player finds will be filled with items that can be crafted into useful gadgets, and even they are very rare.
Not having good gear means that you will be dying a lot, especially in the early stages of the game, since you will be venturing to find anything you need while being practically defenseless.
While pretty fun at first, scouring the map with little to no protection will start feeling pretty tedious soon enough.
Con Poor tutorials
The short tutorials in the game do not do a good job of explaining certain aspects of the game such as cooking or leveling.
Con First few hours can be boring
Initially the player needs to amass enough coal to fuel their ship, which is a bit of a grind.