Dysmantle is a bright and colorful zombie game with an air of mystery. At the start of the game, you climb out of a bunker and discover an abandoned settlement. What happened to the world while you were underground? Is there any escape from the zombie apocalypse? To answer these questions, you'll have to investigate your environment while fighting through hordes of the undead.
Even though Dysmantle is a survival game, there's not much of a focus on survival mechanics. While I spent some time forging for food and even did some farming, I never had to worry about hunger or thirst. Instead, cooking and eating meals was a way for me earn stat upgrades and unlock new abilities.
The controls and camera are a little clunky, which got pretty frustrating when I was trying to fight a monster or escape a pack of hungry zombies. Thankfully, dying just took me back to the last campsite I visited. Zombies never camped my corpse, so I could recover the items I lost without an issue.
While the combat leaves something to be desired, the crafting and basebuilding elements of Dysmantle are pretty great. The crafting recipes are varied, ranging from practical tools, like an axe, to purely decorative items, like makeshift baseball cards. There's also fishing, farming, and animal husbandry, which I enjoyed much more than whacking on zombies with a crowbar.
Dysmantle is a little rough around the edges, but its world is filled with things to see and do. It might not be a hardcore survival sim, but it's a pretty solid basebuilding game. If you don't mind the awkward controls, it could keep you busy for a long time.
Wish I had the money to buy it ngl
2023-03-30