Since it's a common complaint and people love to bring it up with sour tone, I'd like everyone to consider something.
Whenever you're about to say "DS franchise is losing it's creepy tone" I want you to remember one single thing:
How much of the 'creepiness' actually comes from the art style. And how much out of gameplay. Cause let me tell you- I'm pretty damn sure about 70% of the atmosphere from Don't Starve came not from the style of the game, but from the fact you. Played. Alone.
You are stuck on the island. Completely alone. Your character has no way of contacting other people. They only human interactions are vague, in passing, mostly with the one person who trapped you there in the first place.
You can build as much pig houses as you want. In the end, you are on your own here. Your character is trying to make the situation light, make jokes, keep calm. But then the work music quietens, and you hear the ambient sounds of the forest. And you are alone.
Somewhere out there, is a machine that will take you away from this world. To a next one, an exact same as this. Or the other one, behind which is a challenge you know will get you nothing. You get to meet your captor and discover he's just as powerless in this world as you are. And he's also completely alone.
Now tell me, how much more hope and happiness comes from Don't Starve Together.
Maybe what you're missing is not the art style, maybe it's the fact back then, we didn't know almost anything. Charlie was not a concrete character with her mysterious motives. The moon was just something that transformed pigs from time to time. The ocean was unpenetrable abyss you were never meant to cross.
Now that all these things are alive and impact the world, giving you much more opportunities, the characters mention eachother fondly, and you can join a server with multiple people surviving along with you, the tone of DST is quite different. And I think both versions are very appealing, but you cannot bring the tone of one game into the other. It's just not possible.
And I'm not saying the art style didn't change. It did, and it was a conscious decision, and I'm glad to see more people accepting that. I believe Klei says the truth when they say they work on projects because they want to and it brings them joy. Any of you that had to do a project you're not interested in vs one you have lot of love for knows how different the result was.
Thanks for reading.