Don't Starve

As a complete procrastination from doing things constructive, AWB has been playing Don't Starve.
Don't Starve is an 'indy' computer game available from Steam and is pretty much a sandbox type adventure game where your prime function is, well, to make sure you Don't Starve.
It's all rather cute. The game plays as a sort of isometric view scroller and while the world is 3D, you are more a 2D cartoon who hops around with cheery looking animation. Your world is basically mildly surreal. The game itself doesn't offer a huge back story, and basically your hero wakes up with a smug guy standing over you pointing out it will be dark soon and maybe you should go find something to eat.
Okay.... That is helpful...
Well, there is a prequel on YouTube where you get to see your hero was an unsuccessful mad scientist type who in return for forbidden knowledge was basically dragged down by shadow hands into another dimension. A moral there for all of us one would think, and that would basically be, "When your radio starts offering you forbidden knowledge, it's time to get an MP3 player."
Your hero bounces around this world exploring and all the while collecting anything that isn't tied down. Having collected a bunch of items, you then get to craft bigger items which do bigger things in an escalating item race. For example 'flint' can be found on the ground. 'Twigs' can be gathered by hand from saplings and crafted into an Axe or a Pick which can be used to either chop down trees (giving you 'wood' and 'pine cones') or mine rocks (giving you 'stone', more 'flint', and sometimes 'gold'). Wood is useful as then you can light a fire. Did you forget the warning about it being dark soon? Ummm... oppps.
The day cycle starts at day and eventually drifts into twilight. Twilight isn't really that bad although some of the more anti social creatures become more active then. However once night falls it becomes dark... and scary things live in the dark.
Scary? Yes, scary. The game has three values your hero needs to keep track of. Hunger is basic enough as is Health, but in the middle is your Sanity. Stray too far from the warm happy firelight and the scary things in the dark slowly sap your mind. Get in complete darkness and some honking great monster just smites you. Game over.
Losing your Sanity has an active effect. As it drops strange shadow creatures start to appear and your vision blurs a bit. Drop some more and the normally cute rabbits that hang around turn into scary black 'Beardlings'. Go completely loopy and the shadows become solid and actually attack you.
Which would be bad as if you die, you are fully dead. There are some touch stone areas you can activate which will respawn you if you die (at half sanity cause seriously, who wants to wake up inside some stone thing?), but otherwise the game runs in a sort of 'Ironman' mode where you can only save if you are still alive. Die and it cashes out your XP (to unlock new characters) and wipes all your saves.
The exception is if you manage to find 'Maxwell's Door' within your game. Entering the door takes you into Adventure Mode where you are questing against the smug git who trapped you here in the first place. If you die in Adventure Mode you find yourself respawned outside the door. Since you need to actually find Maxwell's Door before you can even start Adventure Mode, that is probably a good thing.
It's a tricky little game. After about 20 days surviving, the world turns to winter and you get to add the task of keeping warm to all your other problems. Food goes off with time, so it is the balance of eating while it is fresh or trying to manage it for the winter. Meat can be dried if you manage to build a drying rack and rabbits, if caught in the traps you can make, can be stored in boxes till the time you need to murder them.
Yes, the game term actually is 'murder', not so much because you don't then get to eat them, but just to mess with your sanity point rating some more. Cutting down trees can also be risky as if another tree sees you do it, there is a change a Tree Guardian will appear and follow you around like an unwashed 12 foot high hippy in a pine needle suit to try and kill you. To make things funnier, unlike other monsters, a Tree Guardian never forgets and doesn't loose interest if you manage to flee far enough. Just the thing when night is about to fall and you are trying to desperately gather enough wood to keep that life protecting circle of light going.
(and yes, in the middle of that he will walk though your camp fire, catch alight and then while blazing away manage to burn down half your camp as he continues to chase you. What joy!)
AWB have managed to survive 23 days so far (before freezing in winter) and unlocked the first four characters. Adventure mode still lays hidden somewhere and the joys of cooking Monster Lasagna are still unknown.
Good sanity draining fun, especially at meals times :)