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Dysmantle cactus8/16/2023 Shelf briefly opened a second store at Ghirardelli Square, which was doing well until the pandemic lockdown forced its closure. “If you remain open to life,” Shelf says, “life will open to you.” As he phased out the video store and built up the nursery, eventually more people were coming in for the plants than the videos, and the store became official. One day while Shelf was on tour with a band, his staff called to say they had sold one of his succulent art creations for $500, and Shelf knew he’d found the future. He used everything he could get his hands on, including old picture frames that he backed with curtains and stuffed with growing medium and succulents. Shelf spent the quiet time reading and learning about succulents, improving his stock and making vertical art gardens. And over the next few years, it all unfolded exactly the way you know it did - until Shelf made what he calls the “ultimate pivot.” In the early 2000s, Shelf and his wife bought a quaint video store in their Bernal Heights neighborhood. It was a drought of a different type that led musician Ken Shelf to open his San Francisco nursery, Succulence Life and Garden Center. Kemble believes the current craze has roots in the realization that water-guzzling landscapes are just not sustainable in drought-plagued California. There are more than 60 succulent plant families and within each, hundreds and even thousands of different plants, giving the gardener a wealth of options. I like plants that are oddities, and there are plenty of these among the succulents.” Terrariums made with succulents are displayed at the Succulence Life and Garden in San Francisco. Another point of appeal is the endless variety of their forms: rosettes and columns and stacks of paddles. “You don’t have to depend so much on flowers for color, if you have leaves tinged with red or orange or pink or purple. “One of the things I find especially appealing in succulents is their array of colors,” says Brian Kemble, curator at Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft Garden, a mecca for succulent lovers. But if you focused only on those things, you would overlook the ethereal qualities that appeal to succulent savorers - the beauty, the opulence, the singularity, the form and the structure. Succulents are fairly easy to grow, have the ability to survive on benign neglect and are perfect for our drought-plagued environment. As a result, the more difficult scraps can be arbitrarily frustrating to overcome.Trying to understand succulents’ surge in popularity is a little like trying to explain why the sky is blue. Whilst these encounters are enjoyably challenging, the switching between targets seemed a little unresponsive when dealing with enemy hordes. By strafing and dodging you can tactically take down pursuing zombies. Combat isn’t an especially strong part of the game, but it works surprisingly well.ĭysmantle uses a targeting system that kicks in automatically on enemy encounters. The game’s world map is absolutely littered with zombie aliens. Naturally this symphony of destruction isn’t just hacking down farmhouses and bus shelters. Consequently there’s never really an area that makes you inattentive. Furthermore, as a byproduct of this mechanism, the environment starts to really matter to the experience beyond what it would in your average video game. Since you have to upgrade yourself in order to destroy more items, you can’t help but want to grind a little more out of each session. Not only is XP gained, but the resources scavenged are used to upgrade your tools of destruction for an even broader demolition.Īs simple and inelegant as this process is, the loop is irresistible. Whereas the addictive grind of other RPG’s lies in gaining XP from destroying enemies, Dysmantle does you the courtesy of granting XP for anything. Of course, these similarities become a minor notice in the grand scheme of what Dysmantle delivers. In actuality it feels a bit more like Diablo to play, only with a far narrower scope of character build and abilities. The simple standard and strong attack, the dodge roll, bonfires and enemy respawns clearly echo FromSoftware games, but with a budget isometric indie vibe. Considering that so many of its gameplay elements are borrowed from the likes of Souls and Zelda games, it’s quite a feat that it can stand out on its own.Īt first glance, Dysmantle doesn’t really seem like much. Possibly the greatest success of Dysmantle is in how its niche aspect dominates your impression of the game. Dysmantle PS5 Review – A Ridiculously Addictive Survival RPG That Will Dismantle All Your Free Time Break Stuff
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