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KickStarter BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION - isometric post-apocalyptic adventure from STASIS developer

WallaceChambers

Learned
Joined
Jul 29, 2019
Messages
311
It's hard to pin-point a reason why any one indie title might not pop as much as another. So many of them are vying for attention and coverage, many good games don't get the attention I feel they deserve. I think Beautiful Desolation could be a slow burner. It's a challenge to, in a meaningful way, convey the appeal of a game that's strongest attributes are setting and world building. Even harder without spoiling specific cool moments or interactions that happen. The way I've piqued my friends' interest is basically to spoil certain weird-ass, cool things that are ultimately not that pivitol. Usually I go for the living train because it's a good flashpoint for how fucked up and unique BD is but spoiling that subplot wont really ruin anything else.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
yeah, it's really hard to tell what caused those outlets to cover an otherwise unknown game being made by literally who
anyways, here's a picture of the editor at RPS that covered No Truce with the Furies in 2017 before they ever moved to London.
image.png
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I don't mean to say that Beautiful Desolation could have sold anywhere near as much as Disco Elysium, but it certainly could have done better than it did.

People just didn't notice this game exists. I can't even find a rip of its soundtrack on YouTube.
 

Pyke

The Brotherhood
Developer
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,223
Location
South Africa
It has been really had trying to get the game out there. Our press list is much larger than it was when we released Stasis - but the engagement is much smaller. The most attention we got was when we released our pirating numbers - but we didn't want to go that route of publicity, so didn't 'chase' that lead.
The industry changed so much, and perhaps we were too out of the loop to figure out just... what that change was. We have a lot of Streams and YouTube lets plays - and those definitely help in getting the name out there.

I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?

The game did its numbers at launch, but there has been a huge drop off with the international COVID19 shit and all of the financial implications that comes with. We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.

Its a hard one, but we will carry on doing what we can!
 

Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
It has been really had trying to get the game out there. Our press list is much larger than it was when we released Stasis - but the engagement is much smaller. The most attention we got was when we released our pirating numbers - but we didn't want to go that route of publicity, so didn't 'chase' that lead.
The industry changed so much, and perhaps we were too out of the loop to figure out just... what that change was. We have a lot of Streams and YouTube lets plays - and those definitely help in getting the name out there.

I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?

The game did its numbers at launch, but there has been a huge drop off with the international COVID19 shit and all of the financial implications that comes with. We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.

Its a hard one, but we will carry on doing what we can!

Good luck man, I hope you guys get more attention. I thought 5-10 times the amount of reviews would have made more sense tbh, hence my questions.

Still, with all of the streams and reviews by folks with decent-sized audiences (Cohh, ACG etc) I can't help but wonder if something about the gameplay or themes or whatever just didn't convince the audience to go from watching the game to buying and playing it or what.

And get out of RSA already, i can't believe the nuke plant issues have gotten even worse since my time in Cape Town ages ago :(
Not sure how much of an upgrade the UK is in other ways, but oh well.
They shouldn't run out of power or water any time soon, at least.
 

Pyke

The Brotherhood
Developer
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,223
Location
South Africa
It has been really had trying to get the game out there. Our press list is much larger than it was when we released Stasis - but the engagement is much smaller. The most attention we got was when we released our pirating numbers - but we didn't want to go that route of publicity, so didn't 'chase' that lead.
The industry changed so much, and perhaps we were too out of the loop to figure out just... what that change was. We have a lot of Streams and YouTube lets plays - and those definitely help in getting the name out there.

I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?

The game did its numbers at launch, but there has been a huge drop off with the international COVID19 shit and all of the financial implications that comes with. We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.

Its a hard one, but we will carry on doing what we can!

Good luck man, I hope you guys get more attention. I thought 5-10 times the amount of reviews would have made more sense tbh, hence my questions.

Still, with all of the streams and reviews by folks with decent-sized audiences (Cohh, ACG etc) I can't help but wonder if something about the gameplay or themes or whatever just didn't convince the audience to go from watching the game to buying and playing it or what.

And get out of RSA already, i can't believe the nuke plant issues have gotten even worse since my time in Cape Town ages ago :(
Not sure how much of an upgrade the UK is in other ways, but oh well.
They shouldn't run out of power or water any time soon, at least.

I think that it may that the gameplay loop just isn't clicking with people enough for them to wanna try it. We are working on the next project, with a focus on more 'gamey' aspects to it. We learned SO much during BD, and I know that we can take it forward to our next project and make it even better!

Yeah - SA feels like a bit of a powder keg sometimes. This national lock-down has accelerated some of the social deterioration by a few years. Not entirely certain what's gonna happen this year. Its a scary place to be in.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,719
Location
California
I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?
Have you guys thought about dropping price down to $9.99 or $14.99? The major downside is that when you put a $9.99 game 70% off, it doesn't leave much bread in the jar.

The game did its numbers at launch
Was that driven by Kickstarter players (which I guess is like ~5k or so based on campaign numbers), or were there a lot of new sales too?

We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.
I've not seen a lot of evidence of additional languages helping much, but adventures seem to sell like hotcakes on Switch.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
99,444
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.thebrotherhoodgames.com/studio/2020/04/20/game-update-1-0-3-5-win-1-0-3-2-osx/

BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION UPDATE: 1.0.3.5 WIN / 1.0.3.2 OSX

CHANGELOG : 1.0.3.5 WIN / 1.0.3.2 OSX | 04/20/2020

1.0.3.2 OSX / 1.0.3.5 WIN – April 20, 2020
65.73 MB Update on Steam

ENGINE:

WIN: General smoother gameplay and slightly faster loading of scenes.
OSX: Removed the “aurora’ shader that was causing black blocks to appear in the map.

LANGUAGE:

Added Turkish Language translation.
Added Spanish Language translation.

English – Corrected several strings in the conversation files to exactly match the spoken words.
English – Added ‘Resolution’ translation string.
English – Added Unity video translation string.
English – Added ‘test video’ translation string.
English – Correctly linked ‘Nanite Experiment’ in PDA translation string.
English – Corrected spelling error in ‘Digital Backers’ credits string.

Added the Spanish and Turkish translator names to the credits.

GENERAL:

Changed the way version number is displayed (now includes the Operating System).

VIDEO:

Added video test option in Main Menu.
Added video option using Unity Native Video for users with video (FMV) playback issues, It uses Unity Native video. Note that Unity Native uses more CPU cycles than AVPRO.
AVPRO requires media foundation to be installed on Windows which is installed by default unless you have Windows “N”.
 

Pyke

The Brotherhood
Developer
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,223
Location
South Africa
I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?
Have you guys thought about dropping price down to $9.99 or $14.99? The major downside is that when you put a $9.99 game 70% off, it doesn't leave much bread in the jar.

The game did its numbers at launch
Was that driven by Kickstarter players (which I guess is like ~5k or so based on campaign numbers), or were there a lot of new sales too?

We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.
I've not seen a lot of evidence of additional languages helping much, but adventures seem to sell like hotcakes on Switch.

We don't wanna 'panic drop' the price too far too fast!

KS backers only accounted for around 2k sales at launch. The numbers may have changed a little from there - but it wasn't enough to skew our projections. We are actually tracking almost the same as Stasis, which is good, cos Stasis has had a SUPER long tail.

Our foreign language sales account for a big chunk of our sales - so we definitely see an upswing in the numbers when we do additional languages. They at least pay for themselves.

I think my disappointment comes from having much higher expectations. I hoped that we would bridge that 'RPG/Adventure Game' line by making a more open world adventure game. But it seems that genre bleeding tends to alienate both sides instead of appealing to both sides. I still think that the game structure is solid - but next time I think we will lean more heavily in one direction or the other. So either go MORE RPG with combat and character upgrades/stats, or more 'adventure game' with smaller more linear sections in a sort of 'spoke' configuration.
 

Grotesque

±¼ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 16, 2012
Messages
9,351
Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
I do wonder if the price point is too 'centered'. Like its on the cusp of a considered purchase - and maybe there is just way more choice out there?
Have you guys thought about dropping price down to $9.99 or $14.99? The major downside is that when you put a $9.99 game 70% off, it doesn't leave much bread in the jar.

The game did its numbers at launch
Was that driven by Kickstarter players (which I guess is like ~5k or so based on campaign numbers), or were there a lot of new sales too?

We are releasing in some additional languages, as well as working towards some other platform releases.
I've not seen a lot of evidence of additional languages helping much, but adventures seem to sell like hotcakes on Switch.

We don't wanna 'panic drop' the price too far too fast!

KS backers only accounted for around 2k sales at launch. The numbers may have changed a little from there - but it wasn't enough to skew our projections. We are actually tracking almost the same as Stasis, which is good, cos Stasis has had a SUPER long tail.

Our foreign language sales account for a big chunk of our sales - so we definitely see an upswing in the numbers when we do additional languages. They at least pay for themselves.

I think my disappointment comes from having much higher expectations. I hoped that we would bridge that 'RPG/Adventure Game' line by making a more open world adventure game. But it seems that genre bleeding tends to alienate both sides instead of appealing to both sides. I still think that the game structure is solid - but next time I think we will lean more heavily in one direction or the other. So either go MORE RPG with combat and character upgrades/stats, or more 'adventure game' with smaller more linear sections in a sort of 'spoke' configuration.


so.. the natural question that comes to mind is, do you consider Disco Elysium an RPG?

:)
 

Runciter

Augur
Joined
Jan 17, 2012
Messages
188
I gave this a shot. It has a great atmosphere thanks to the graphics and South African dialogue. The world is pretty unique, the opening had me hooked. But I couldn't suspend disbelief about the characters and the story, and this combined with the "fetch quest" gameplay loop put me off after a few hours.

The characters are
too accepting of their newfound situation, going back seems like an odd goal since it would take a hell of an effort and they only have a shitty life to go back to, there is too much banal emo intermission dialogue - I couldn't bring myself to care about the dog or the brothers' childhood.
The world seems static and too much like a "theme park" to be convincing - which works for a game that doesn't take itself seriously like Wasteland 2 but in BD I wanted to be convinced.

I'd say worth it if you're looking for something fresh but far from perfect.
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
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Vatnik
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
14,340
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don't identify with EU-NPC land
Strap Yourselves In
is this game worth playing?

Ive recently played it, and got bored halfway through[i guess its halfway through]. Cumbersome and time consuming traveling between locations -it doesn't value the user time at all, game would be 200% more enjoyable if backtracking was instant, same animations of travel[going to location, traveling through warden] that take lot of time[you will spend 1-2 hours just wasting at looking the traveling between points...], lots of backtracking, some of the fetch quests and puzzles doesnt make sense and lack the versimilitude/authenticity[bringing some hunted rat to a computer to gain access to village WTF? xD], i dont like the techno-native setting -i hate african retarded native culture. Lots of hippie babbling in dialogues i've stopped paying attention after few hours, because they simply became boring -my only favourite dialogues were between your brother and the cyberdog, the rest is just drug-trippy filler that is incoherent and annoying -behind a religious babble it hides banal things about their boring society, but its shrouded behind a barrage of obtuse words and concepts, that is just annoying[like a fucking hakunin from F2]. Its like deciphering real historical happenings from religious scribes/mythos sources, or like making assumptions about advanced technological stuff from ezekiel books from bible, or vimanas from sanskrit. The locations and art is creative, but the game feels like schizophrenic fever dream, thing become weirder and weirder as the game progressed[a fucking talking train with flesh inside...infusing seeds with breast milk, that then are cultivated and smoked, this is some african tier shit, like the video with them blowing into the cow ass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8PYozPB-8I -sorry, but who likes such weird shit and stupid story snippets like that?]. Comical characters and voice acting was very uneven, some attrocious. You gradually don't take the world seriously until you lose all attention and dont care, get bored and skip through dialogues, sadly you have to read all the boring crap, because it has hints to complete the quests, so in the end you stop playing because its impossible to progress without reading dialogues, that you don't really want to read -even with option "cut to the point","stop talking hippie bullshit kak", characters tend to delve into their inane ramblings. My only motivating force was to leave this god forsaken place ASAP and finally return to south africa, sadly the story was feebly tied to this idea, and there was lack of progression in this regards, after the first part of the game -then you were thrown into a fetch quest loop, where you discover the world around you. For a person who don't give a shit about this native world, it was a chore to slough through, to get some moments of actual progress and building the array. Sadly these never came, even in half of the game -you either do all the quest and got into big finale getting all the parts, or get no other REAL progression throughout with building the array one by one.

Overall im very dissapointed after STASIS which was decent 6+/7 out of 10 game. This one is 4/10 at best, it starts as a 7/10 game, but then it goes downhill. If you like adventure games grounded in reality/real authentic setting this is not for you. If you are the guy/gal who is the type "the weirder and more obtuse, the better" then its your type of game.

Though given the art style,its beauty,uniqueness and attention to detail,isometric view and dialog box a'la fallout i hope they could in future make a game like fallout, maybe with combat elements?
 
Last edited:

ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,606
So I played it on GOG.com, and honestly it did not click. Yes, the artworks are incredible, but the game does not feel like it has any direction ("what to do" as a player - I am sorry my first computer games were wargames I like to know what my objectives are, whether it is "become a pirate", "try to remember my own name, solve a murder and remove the hanging corpse from the scene", "destroy the enemy refinery" or "crush the White movement"). In addtion, the MC seems not too surprised or shocked by his situation, totally casual really, which creates the uncomfortable situation that you think he knows stuff you don't know as a player, possibly the tech imported by the aliens even in the "normal" world ? Which means you feel disconnected to him. No direction and disconnected from the MC => I had to force myself to carry on, until I stopped trying.

I don't regret buying the game though, and certainly did not refund, because well beautiful game to have in the collection, but also because GOG.com gave me Stasis for free, which I quite liked since well you know what you are supposed to do and you really want to know what happened to that spaceship. Not the best adventure game I have played, but solid & original enough.

Good luck with your next project Pyke.
 
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Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
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Vatnik
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don't identify with EU-NPC land
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Actaully the Dan is even less shocked and at one moment he even encourage MC to stay in this god forsaken world, because they have nothing to return to. Yeah nothing to return to, beside your own fucking people and culture you libshit retards xD
I guess the alcohol really have eaten into his brain, and should have never came for that loser, at least MC wife would be alive.
 

Pyke

The Brotherhood
Developer
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,223
Location
South Africa
Hey all - just wanted to let you know that I'm reading everything said about the game! I really appreciate all the criticisms of the game that you have - they are all being taken into account with our next (pretty bad ass) project!
 
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Hey all - just wanted to let you know that I'm reading everything said about the game! I really appreciate all the criticisms of the game that you have - they are all being taken into account with our next (pretty bad ass) project!
Can't wait to see it!
 

Pyke

The Brotherhood
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Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,223
Location
South Africa
The latest update has a Quest Log added, where Mark will note down clues and give hints about where to go next if you're stuck.
 

ScrotumBroth

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
Hey all - just wanted to let you know that I'm reading everything said about the game! I really appreciate all the criticisms of the game that you have - they are all being taken into account with our next (pretty bad ass) project!
For what it's worth, I think your strength is in slow, but immaculate pace, attention to details, and superb atmosphere. But those don't mix well with an open world setting.

Whether you go with an RPG or adventure stylo, you can count on my shekels.
 

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