Burn it down
There aren’t many conceivable scenarios where everything has gone completely sideways that strike a more dire mental image than the zombie apocalypse. Society has collapsed and turned into a herd of shambling monsters. It seems irreparable.
Upcoming open-world RPG Dysmantle doesn’t ask that you repair it. Dysmantle asks that you break everything. That’s how you’ll make a cozy little life for yourself. And, if everything goes just right, you might escape this hellhole.
Developer 10tons (whose past works include Tesla vs Lovecraft and Crimsonland) says that 99 percent of items in Dysmantle can be destroyed. The remaining one percent are crucial fixtures needed to advance the story. It’s very much a core tenet of the game.
All of this dismantling in dystopia is in service of survival. All the materials from the demolished stuff is used to build a homestead. It seems part Stardew Valley, part Fortnite, and part Zelda in a way. Here’s the high-level synopsis 10tons gives, which is wonderfully concise: “Explore. Fight. Level up. Survive. Gather. Craft. Harvest. Hunt. Build. Farm. Solve puzzles. Fish. Cook. Live. Enjoy the bittersweet post-apocalypse.”
Dysmantle seems like the sort of intricate exploration game that could be neat as long as it doesn’t spread itself too thin. There are a lot of different systems. We should find out relatively soon if this is a zombie apocalypse worth living through. Dysmantle hopes to launch sometime in 2019 on PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One for $20.
