While not my favorite genre, I do enjoy a good point-and-click game from time to time. The slower pace and the need to really focus on the details is a nice change of pace from my normal gaming diet of shooting and stabbing. Once you add the lore of H.P. Lovecraft, you’d think Desolatium would be a match made in heaven. Or whatever realm Cthulu is from.

The game is played from the perspective of four different protagonists as they search for their missing friend, whom they believe has been kidnapped by a cult that is behind a series of missing person cases. This spans a total of 14 chapters in which you juggle who to play as regularly, which leads to one of my issues. This is typically done with a jarring transition, and until you get acclimated to the voices of each character, it’s hard to tell who you’re taking control of at any given time. Even after completing the game, I am still unclear on some of the characters.

Since the narrative is the biggest part of the game, I won’t dive too deeply into spoilers and will focus more on the actual minute-to-minute gameplay. Just know that this is a well-written narrative, and despite some lackluster voiceovers, it kept me hooked until the credits rolled. A high point for me was the notes strewn about the duration of the game, which features some of the most chilling examples of vaguely written text since “Itchy, tasty” cemented itself in my brain decades ago thanks to Resident Evil. The only negative here was how small the text was with no option to change the font size within the menus. A 10-point font is fine when you’re playing on a PC monitor, but when you’re playing on a console across the room from a 55-inch TV, it becomes annoying.

The visuals are very much a mixed bag for me, as I loved the photorealistic backdrops that spanned a number of locales that each have their own unique settings, and outside of the character models that look extremely dated, were outstanding. So much so that it makes the actual characters look even worse when they are standing in the uber-detailed environments.

This isn’t your typical point-and-click game – instead of clicking arrows to turn around in each scene, you’re able to look freely in a 360 view. In my opinion it was an improvement, but it left me wishing this was developed as a walking sim, because it almost feels like I am teleporting from room to room in a VR setting. This made navigation a bit clunky in some areas since you’ll always warp into a new room at the same angle, but finding your way across multiple screens is often disorienting and required me to memorize some areas since regular backtracking is also a thing.

The backtracking caused me some frustration from time to time. There are quite a few objectives that are delivered in a vague way that left me wandering throughout the available scenes aimlessly searching for something to jar the game forward. These were never due to glitches like the game had hung up, but I often questioned it just before finding the missing piece to unlock the next objective.

If you’re a fan of point-and-click games, Desolatium is an easy recommendation, even more so if you’re a fan of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Despite not quite sticking all of the landings when it comes to the presentation, the end result is a slower-paced horror adventure that does more right than wrong.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Stunning Photorealistic Visuals
• Well Written Narrative Filled with Spooky Documents
• Full 360 Control Within the Still Frames

Cons

• Wonky Character Models
• Weird Transitions Between Protagonists
• Lack of Player Direction

Desolatium was developed by Superlumen and published by SOEDESCO. The game launched on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Desolatium, check out the official site.

 

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