DYSMANTLE

This is (yet) another post-apocalyptic survival game, with a colorful palette (which makes it stand out to all other in this genre). To me the colorful design is appealing and I was interested enough to take a better look at it. The game is "in dev" but is highly playable. There are some flaws however: the controls are very cluncky, and personally iam a bit dissapointed by the 'w,a,s,d' key movents, instead of a 'click to move' approach. It can be a frustrating challenge to face your character towards the enemies during combat, as most of the time you will miss the enemy and hit an adjacent object. The menu design are a bit weird, sometimes you need the ESC key to exit the menus, other times you can just use the mouse to navigate / close the menu. I miss the consistency at that point. At this point the game itself feels a bit "dull". When entering "camp" all (killed) enemies are respawn back to the exact same position over and over and over again. The goal of the game is to collect items, upgrade your gear and escape the area. your "challenges" exists in the form of "get item x,y in quantities of y, to upgrade item z". That summed up is the whole game (for now, as it is in dev). Lots of room for improvements, but also a lot of potential to make it a fun game! If you are looking for a simple survival alike game without a depressing color theme, and don't mind the early-access glitches, then give this game a try!

I have played through all the available content so far (well over half the game) and, while I didn't regret my time spent overall, the game so far is shallow and I can't see it getting much better at release. Simply put, you'll be spending 90% of your time just whacking stuff in order to get resources. The game loop boils down to destroying anything you can so you can get materials, so you can create or upgrade tools, so you can whack more things, so you can get materials, etc... The game also promises an entirely destructible world and, while I'm pretty sure that will be true at some point, so far you can't get tools that can destroy things like walls, leading to the experience so far feeling constricted and rather linear. The enemies aren't all that special. Their patterns are pretty simple and fighting them consists of basic dodging and attacking for the most part. I'm particularly disappointed by the lack of variety in enemy models. Each enemy type only has one model, leading to you beating the same female zombie with a pink shirt throughout the entire game. I imagine this could change as the game gets developed, but it felt misleading looking at promo art. Something I also want to point out, and so have other reviewers, is the nature of the game. This isn't a rougelike or generated experience. Project Zomboid, this is not. There is a defined world with a defined story and a defined protagonist and a pretty fixed order of things to do. It plays like a Souls game of sorts, and the sandbox aspect isn't really there since you mostly just destroy, not build. This is not a bad thing by any means, but I imagine people could get the wrong idea by looking at the game, like I did. Something I also wasn't a fan of is the storytelling. All voice acting is text-to-speech, and the protagonist's monologue is decorated with plenty of emojis. The story isn't very gripping, but it's sufficient I guess. Overall, it has potential, but I'm not holding my breath either.

I'm really glad I picked this one up. Why? Well, Dysmantle has almost all the good things of a survival game and almost none of the bad things. For example: You can't die of starvation! This game mechanic simply does not exist. But you can cook and each meal you eat gives you a permanent boost. The combat is fun but mistakes can be fatal. Luckily you can craft painkillers a bit later in the game. Also, your health gets replenished every time you sit at your campfire (the monsters return too then but later you'll have a skill that stops it). The map is pretty well done, collecting materials, upgrading your stuff and crafting is simple and satisfying, the graphics are nice to look at. This game is very polished already although it's still early access. Keep up the good work, guys!

I decided to pick up this game on a whim and I'm happy that I did. As I said in the title it has a solid 'How to Survive' feel. I thoroughly enjoyed that game and I feel this game executes that style of game play quiet well. The over all art style and sound design is pretty solid, although they do use a bit of 'text to speech' for some of the voice acting in the radio broad cast you will encounter in game. Given the otherwise good sound design I wouldn't be surprised if that's replaced later on in the games development. The only thing I might complain about is that sometimes facing your character towards an enemy can feel a little clunky. You get used to it, but it could use some improvement. TL;DR review It's a pretty good 'How to Survive' clone. Problems: -uses some text-to-speech in place of dialogue, which is kind of meh. But at the time of review the game is still Early Access. -character facing could use some improvement, but it works as is.