DYSMANTLE

The first time my character died, I was sad, and thought I need to start over or do something different. But, then just woke up back at my camp. Hmm. So, death doesn't seem to have much penalty. You lose your spot and all your stuff falls to the ground. Pick it up later. Unlike other zombie type games, no need to eat. There's no real time constraints. And, going around with a big tool and just smashing houses and cars into little bits is really quite fun. Collect items to make other items and fill quests. Or, just smash stuff. The game is "small" on my hard drive. Doesn't take a lot of RAM, runs on my laptop, and is really fun. I believe that there's now some logic to what the character will swing a weapon at, so that if any monster is in range, and in about the right direction, it will be attacked first, rather than some coffee cup. WASD to move and mouse to do actions and combat helps keep from cramping up one finger. I recommend this to anyone who wants a fun, challenging, easy, difficult, and low-stress game. Sometimes I like to take 30 minutes after work to just go around and smash things.

The main gameplay loop is mostly fun but there are clearly contrived "padding" going on. This game is fun and you should be able to get your moneys worth of enjoyment at full price but if you can get a discount I would say don't hesitate. Breaking things down and hunting for materials is fairly fun but there is a point it become monotonous and there are not enough tools to keep it "fresh" for the long haul. The monsters are not really all that hard once you understand how to time them with the real difficulty coming in when dealing with multiple mobs of different kinds and as long as you don't rush in like a mad hatter you should make short work of most mobs. Now... the padding problem. There are somethings you cannot build without triggering events, and there is some backwards logic... like a baseball bat being better at dismantling things than the "crowbar" you start with. You also have a lot of things to bash which is great, but only 1 tool can hit multiple things at one saving you precious time and monotony but I have found no others. I have not beat the game but I am past the "gas mask" part and boy can I tell you that was "long" tooo long. The area you have to go through was intentionally made long and arduous and was too much for my liking. All that said... bring a couch buddy... smashing things goes so much faster! But if you don't wear different outfits you can get mixed up on who is who easily. Not perfect but pretty darn fun either way... you should not regret this one!

This is a game where you kill zombies, smash things to pieces, and use those pieces to build yourself better equipment. The game runs flawlessly, looks nice, and as far as I can tell is almost entirely bug-free. The beginning is also really fun, with a strong sense of progression as you upgrade your equipment to smash tougher and tougher obstacles, face stronger and stronger enemies, open up shortcuts, expand your options, and look forward to the next discovery. Then the pacing stops: you are the second and third best weapons in the game (ignoring post-game stuff) within a couple hours, similar situation for all other kinds of item. Some of the controls are bad: you can equip 4 main weapons but only cycle them one by one, same for your consumables, planting seeds is finnicky... You'll also see underutilized content: explosive barrels in the environment and are really cool, but you can't have your own explosive for demolition (grenades are a sad joke). Even worse, one of your early (and weak) weapons has the ability to hit multiple obstacles at once, which helps with clearing out multiple weak obstacles quickly, but no other weapon you'll ever see has such an ability, and of course both post-game weapons have it. Speaking of those, when exploring you might find the a secret project to help with reconstruction after the apocalypse: if you collect an enormous amount of resources to help, you'll get access to... a locked indestructible door protecting the best weapon in the game, and the key is near the end of the lengthy main quest. For the other post-game weapon you just need to complete all activities of a certain kind to get to it, but some of those activities are inaccessible until you progress almost to the end of the main quest. If the game paced the existing content properly, it would be a 4/5: as it stands, the last 10% of content is stretched over 90% of the game, and that's just not fun.

... and I don't mean, that it has a lack of atmosphere. It hasn't! It's just the good and nice end of the world. You open the door of your bomb shelter years after the apocalypse and now need to cope with the new status quo of the world. GOG was in the need of a well crafted, little survival game like this with very good exploration in a handmade world and an already good crafting and progression system. Usually I don't play INDEV and early access titles ... too many of which rest unfinished or abandoned in my library. But for this game, I made an exception. Too hungry am I for the end of the world. Didn't regret it this time :)

Its a survival game with twists. Looting and crafting and searching and killing mosters all good. Has elements of dungeon crawler, tomb raider puzzle solving, and tower defense. Its not perfect but I enjoyed it despite soem issues. Its a bit too long. You can get lost in the quest lines but google can answer all. I had 1 bug where I had to task manager kill the program but it recovered fine after that. You only get the best 2 weopons at the end and so you don't really get to use them much.