Screenshots & trailers
Review sentiment over time
Weekly positive-review rate (green) and review volume (bars). Dashed lines mark significant patches; the amber line is the start of the current scoring window. Hover the dots to see what drove a dip or a jump.
How this score was computed
The VGC Score is a weighted blend on a press-comparable 0-100 quality scale. Steam approval rates are first calibrated (95% positive on Steam ≈ 89.5 quality, since Steam approval skews high). Press and tracked creator reviews each count ~2x a player review and share one cap against player evidence (creator buy/skip calls pool into an approval rate, calibrated like Steam approval); all-time sentiment is capped and halved (it's context, not verdict); reviews of the current build carry the most weight when a fresh patch anchors the window; and a 'typical game' prior keeps small samples from pegging the scale. Because press reviews and Metacritic user aggregates describe the launch build, their weight decays as the game ages (3-year half-life after a 1-year grace). That's how a game that launched rough can outgrow its old reception once updates win players over. Reviews under 2h playtime (the refund window), non-Steam activations, and free copies are downweighted.
| Component | Positive | Quality (0-100) | Weight (pseudo-reviews) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Press reviews (OpenCritic) | – | 70 | 18 |
| Creator reviews (1 tracked) | – | 97 | 1 |
| All-time Steam reviews | 77% | 72 | 348 |
| Metacritic user ratings | – | – | 0 |
| Post-patch Steam reviews (trust-weighted) | 100% | 97 | 0 |
| Calibration prior (typical game) | – | 72 | 50 |
Scoring window: last 30 days (no significant patch detected) · 1 reviews sampled · 1 total reviews in window · weighted 0.2 up / 0 down · computed 2h ago · full methodology →
Press & Creators reviews (32)
Individual verdicts from outlets we track: scored reviews first, most trusted outlets first among them. The small badge is each outlet's trust score: how well its scoring history aligns with players.
- 65
“Beautiful Desolation is a deep, intelligent, puzzle adventure presented with a unique isometric view. It's an easy recommendation to sci-fi fans who prefer narrative over action, but the Switch is not the best way to explore this apocalyptic world.”
read full review ↗ - 50
- 70
“Beautiful Desolation is not a perfect game by all means. But damn, its atmospheric world and crazy, grotesque citizens are stealing the show, forcing you to beat the game just to see how many strange creatures you can meet along the way.”
read full review ↗ - 40
“We were, as you can tell from the body of this review, consistently frustrated with Beautiful Desolation, another ambitious and lovely-looking game whose Switch incarnation just wasn't an acceptable way to experience it - shades of Genesis Noir's port (though that was better). It's especially unfortunate because this is exactly the sort of different that the Switch needs, but it needs to run better than what's on offer here. If you can muscle past the problematic controls, excessive loading and weak performance, you may be able to get into Beautiful Desolation. There is a lot to like in its worldbuilding, gorgeous backgrounds and interesting premise. But we felt like it just asked us to overlook way, way too many problems for the privilege.”
read full review ↗ - 64
“First glances at the pre-rendered backgrounds and plain look and feel of Beautiful Desolation brought a bit of a thrilling feeling to me as a classic PC gamer, making me hope for the likes of classic Fallout or Wasteland...”
read full review ↗ - 70
“Beautiful Desolation is a very unique and different kind of adventure game. It has a tremendous amount of respect for the player to figure things out, but also has little respect for their time too. The writing is very engaging, and the acting is surprisingly exceptional. The South African flavour of the cast adds a ton of personality to the experience; Mark and Don's chemistry feels very real, and their slang and colloquialisms make them very unlikely video game characters. They're both schlubby guys in their '40s, and even POOCH manages to have a great deal of humanity to her character, despite being a robot dog.xploring a post apocalyptic cyber-nightmare South Africa, while solving puzzles and talking to religious robots and using diplomacy to diffuse warring factions without any combat sounds like a fun time, then Beautiful Desolation is that kind of game. The experience is held together with amazing looking backdrops, freakish cyborgs to converse with and movie quality CGI cutscenes. This is not an RPG, but it is a highly creative and imaginative adventure game that has some spotty controls and overly cryptic puzzles.”
read full review ↗ - 60
“Regrettably, the Switch port just isn't up to par. Between long loading and controls that border on unusable, playing it is ultimately frustrating. While I appreciate the effort to adapt from PC to console, in this instance the change just doesn't work with the existing structure.”
read full review ↗ - 70
“So overall, while it does a great job at telling the story of two brothers and their relationship for better or for worse which adds replayability to see how different decisions will impact it, Beautiful Desolation will not be for everyone. With some complex and often convoluted puzzles offering zero hints of how to proceed and often seemingly empty environments with nothing to do, it’s hard to recommend it to everyone, BUT, if you are a fan of well written narratives, cryptic puzzles, and some very well designed anything but human creatures, I wholeheartedly suggest taking a few cracks at this adventure and what it offers.”
read full review ↗ - 50
“Beautiful Desolation may have some gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds, but its impenetrable plot, two-dimensional characters, maddening indirect quests, and cryptic puzzles make it very hard to recommend to anyone but diehard fans of obtuse point-and-click adventures.”
read full review ↗ - 50
“I'm fairly sure that Beautiful Desolation is a decent game. This is a vast world clearly built with passion and with a keen attention to detail. Unfortunately, this console conversion is no way at all to experience The Brotherhood's latest. Awful pathfinding, so many invisible walls that if they were visible they could be seen from space, and clunky, unresponsive controls turn the fetch quest-heavy gameplay into a meandering slog.”
read full review ↗ - 70
“Beautiful Desolation is a good looking atmospheric game packed with ideas that sometimes suffers from almost trivial gameplay and sometimes from high level of challenge. It's evident a lot of work went into the title, but it required a firmer editorial hand that would smooth out the rough edges.”
read full review ↗ - 75
“Beautiful Desolation is an exciting blend of point-and-click adventure and classic isometric RPG. The game features a well-written story that sets place in a bizarre world that is somehow familiar and strange at the same time. There are some problems with the game's RPG elements, and the control system is not well implemented in console versions. Anyways, it is an interesting game with a good story and beautiful audio-visual experience, which I can recommend to that point and click fans.”
read full review ↗
Pure Nintendo
Fintendo
3DNews
Nintendo Life
Nindie Spotlight
Cubed3
NintendoWorldReport
Chalgyr's Game Room
FingerGuns
TheSixthAxis
SomHráč.sk
Gamefa…and 20 more tracked reviews.
Patch history
- NEW LANGUAGES ADDEDNov 22, 2022
- 1.0.7.3 WINJun 21, 2022
- UPDATE AND DISCOUNTJul 27, 2021
- 1.0.6.7 B (POLISH LANGUAGE ADDED)Jul 27, 2021
- UPDATE & SALE NOW ON!May 27, 2021
- 1.0.6.7 WINDOWSMay 26, 2021
- BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION MEGA UPDATEJul 20, 2020
- BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION MAJOR UPDATE & SALE!Apr 20, 2020significant · resets scoring window
- DECEMBER UPDATEDec 5, 2019
- NEWS UPDATEApr 9, 2019