“Hey, why dontcha take our mega-hit game and do whatever you want with it?”

Okay, Klei’s offer to Capy to work on their Don’t Starve series wasn’t quite that casual, but pretty darned close. As fellow Canadian independent developers and longtime studio buds, all it really takes to get a project rolling is a friendly chat over a tasty beverage. And just like that: Wilson, Maxwell, and the rest of the gang left Vancouver to take a tropical vacation, and Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked was born.

And now Shipwrecked is sailing onto PS4 this spring. Rejoice, Don’t Starve players!

Looking for a fresh take on their beloved survival game, Klei asked Capy if we’d be interested in creating a new expansion. They gave us no guidelines or rules for what we could do with a Don’t Starve game — just a blank canvas in the form of their amazing video game with a wickedly-committed community of diehard fans.

Jeez, pretty trusting bunch, those Klei-folk, eh?

After jumping into the Don’t Starve deep end and throwing around ideas for where to take it, what stuck was the idea of transplanting the Don’t Starve characters and mechanics to a whole new, built-from-scratch world: one of sun-scorched desert islands featuring brand new biomes, creatures, bosses, weapons, and ways to avoid starvation.

And then the secret ingredient: just add water. And boats. Oh, and crabbits.

Obviously the main feature of Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked, beyond the change to a sunny locale (Well, sometimes sunny), is the freedom to craft boats and take to the water to explore this entirely new nautical world.

Hop in a sailboat and chart new corners of the mysterious archipelago, paddle a raft through the crashing waves and shout “Land Ho!” when you spot a newly discovered jungle island, find treasure maps that lead to buried riches, or fire cannons at pursuing sea monsters or schools of surface-slicing fins. To us, the rich mythos of shipwreck and pirate castaway lore was a perfect fit for Don’t Starve’s survival gameplay, and the expansion into seafaring offers a new set of challenges to established players.

This exciting new take on Don’t Starve resulted in Capy and Klei Voltron-ing to create this ambitious and huge new chapter of the Don’t Starve experience. It was a super fun developement experience for us, and we’re excited to bring the fun to PS4 players.

To not just survive, but thrive in Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked, players had better polish their compasses, wipe the smudges off their telescope lenses, and find their sea legs in a hurry! A pirate hat wouldn’t hurt, either.