Craft the World vs Don't Starve
Craft the World
Craft the World is the game to play if you enjoy the survival, mining, and crafting aspects of Minecraft. The game's quite similar to Minecraft in many ways. You can plant and harvest crops. You can and will actually need to dig to find rare minerals as well. You can also craft a variety of tools, furniture, and, in general, items that will help your dwarves survive the periodic invasions of goblins, the undead, and other otherworldly monsters or will at least make your dwarves content.That said, there are a few very important differences between Craft the World and Minecraft that made the former so unique. Instead of playing a character, you get to become the omnipotent "god" of small dwarves who you can order to do your bidding or you could even control them individually if needed.
The crafting system is quite different too. Don't get me wrong - you still need to combine raw materials to create the stuff you need like in Minecraft, but similar to the crafting system in a standard MMORPG, there's a progression system in place that will allow you to unlock new "technologies" simply by crafting lower-tech items repeatedly...even if you don't really need that many of them. What can you do with the surplus of items then? Well, you can just sell them. There's a shop that sells resources that you may need in exchange for game cash. You can randomly earn game cash by battling creatures and monsters and you could also sell off your extra items for cash.
Craft the World may not be everyone's cup of tea due to the rather repetitive and slightly clumsy crafting system, but the game is still pretty fun and it does offer a challenge for fans of the survival genre.
Don't Starve
Don't Starve is a pretty dreary and dark survival game set in a rich world filled with plenty of animals/game to hunt, monsters to kill, and resources to gather. With a gothic-like theme, the game's best feature is perhaps the way it hands the reins to its players and let these players decide what sort of survival game they'd want to play and how difficult will the game be. You can literally customize everything in the world you'll be playing in, ranging from the weather, how frequent lightning strikes, how long a season lasts, how much resources are spawned and many more.The game also has a very nice selection of characters that you can gradually unlock as you play the game. Each character will even have their own specialty that you can then make use of when the situation calls for it.
Don't Starve is a survival game that's as punishing as it is vicious. Expect to die a lot in the game and turn all those deaths into useful lessons that you can then build upon. If you fancy surviving with your friends in tow, then you might want to get the multiplayer version of the game, Don't Starve Together, instead.