Beautiful Desolation

Beautiful Desolation for PC is an adventure game developed by The Brotherhood Games. Just like Statis, studio’s previous production, Beautiful Desolation was funded on Kickstarter.

Plot

The story in Beautiful Desolation for PC begins in 1980 when a mysterious monolith appeared in the sky. The mysterious Alien construction (named Penrose by the people) was thoroughly investigated and researched by scientists, and all the gathered technology was reverse-engineered. Thanks to that, the mankind made a colossal civilization leap. Initially, the nations of the Earth were united by the amazing discovery, but it was only a matter of time before old feuds reemerged – this lead to a global conflict.

Many years have passed since that time. The game takes the player to a post-apocalyptic Africa where they are given control over two characters: doctor Mark Leslie and Pooch, a four-legged mechanical scout unit that was created thanks to the Penrose technology. Its primary objective is to gather data about the visited locations, encountered organisms. Pooch’s purely logical approach to many things occasionally irritates Mark, which is reflected in the very humorous dialogues. Mark’s brother, sergeant major Don Leslie who is an ex-marine and a veteran of the Vietnam War, also plays an important role in the game.

Mechanics

The action in Beautiful Desolation for PC is presented from an isometric point of view. The gameplay is based on a couple of aspects, exploration being one of them. The game’s world, created in cooperation with Brian Fargo, is an original blend of half-desert areas and post-apocalytic town and settlements. This Africa is inhabited not only by groups that use the Penrose technology, but also by local tribes whose culture is based on rituals and customs characteristic for aboriginal Africans. As we play, we will encounter all kinds of mutated fauna. Some of them will be friendly; some of them will simply try to kill us. Despite that, the game has no combat mechanics.

Solving riddles also plays an important role in the game. Most of them are based on using and tampering with the gathered items. Their difficulty level may vary, forcing players to look for clues. We can find them by talking with NPCs or closely observing the environment. Like in many other adventure games, we will be frequently using our inventory. Extremely advanced technology that may even look like magic mixes here with retrofuturistic devices from the 1980’s.

Technical Aspects

Beautiful Desolation for PC features high quality visuals. Achieving that level of implementation was possible thanks to photogrammetry. Taking hundreds of pictures of various objects allowed the creation of highly detailed 3D models that were later implemented in the game. Beautiful Desolation has an atmospheric soundtrack that mixes electronic/ambient music with tribal African melodies.

Last updated on 30 September 2020