Thirteen years. That’s a mighty long time, no matter what kind of project you dedicate yourself into. That annoying artsy movie Boyhood, for instance, was lauded because it had taken twelve years to be filmed. Now, imagine something in an industry as ever-evolving and tech-forward as gaming. Imagine taking thirteen years for your development project to see the light of day. And no, we are not talking about Duke Nukem Forever. We’re talking about an actual labor of love made by a game developer who has worked in games like Manifold Garden and Outer Wilds in the past. Let’s talk about Desolus.

Walk towards the portal to explore a new dimension… which is just a bit more purple.

Desolus is a first-person puzzle game set in a Gothic-styled fortress / town of sorts. You are summoned to this place to revert a time-space distortion calamity. Your goal is to venture through this bizarre world, with Escher-like environments, and seek for a Guardian to avoid this mess from continuing. Truth be told, it is not the most impressive story in the world, mostly due to how it is presented. You are, yet again, a mute protagonist, talking to other silent characters, in a land that simply isn’t that interesting to explore, at least when it comes to its lore.

Too late. Already terrified.

The game lives and dies by its gameplay, as its overall presentation, whilst occasionally impressive, is just… there. My issue lies in some very generic tropes it uses in both its art style and music: the ethereal and mystic city, the empty landscapes, the lack of people, the piano motiff that can only be described as “artsy indie award bait”. If Desolus wants to justify its very long development cycle, as well as its existence next to other puzzlers which also took a decade to be released (see Order of the Sinking Star for further details), it needs to NAIL its gameplay. So… does it?

Case and…

As mentioned, this is a first-person puzzle game, one which deals with unlocking gates, all of which are locked behind mystical chains. You just need to touch each terminal holding a chain to unlock the door, usually a couple of them lock each passageway. Solve the puzzle, move towards the next puzzle, until you reach the end of an area. New areas will introduce new variations of the same puzzle, but most of the problems and solutions revolve around two things: moving predetermined objects around the room, and moving the same objects through different dimensions.

The game features a creative and technically impressive usage of two time-related dimensions you can hop in and out of by simply crossing a portal in real time. When you interact with a specific icon, you can transport objects between these two dimensions. It’s all in real time, which is impressive from a visual and technical standpoint. Not so much when you assess the complexity of the puzzles, because, at the end of the day, you are just transporting one asset from A to B, in order to reach a new ledge or whatnot.

… point.

Puzzle variety isn’t big, and they are rarely actual brain teasers. If you’re thinking on buying Desolus for the challenge, there isn’t a lot of it. Either my brain got used to some of the torturous gauntlers in Order of the Sinking Star, or this game just wasn’t very challenging at all. What’s worse, it is a very linear experience, so you have to do a series of samey and unchallenging puzzles, one after the other, only to be occasionally rewarded with some story-related exposition, one I wasn’t particularly interested in. Furthermore, when it comes to the attempt to impress you with its visuals, Desolus suffers from a really inconsistent framerate on Switch 2. It’s a puzzle game, sure, nothing that hinders the gameplay itself, but a frustrating bummer nonetheless.

A visual spectacle at times, hindered by a really bad framerate.

This is a fine puzzle with the occasional breathtaking scenery and dimension-based gauntlet, but it’s rarely challenging, very repetitive, and somewhat uninteresting in terms of its story. The only rewards you get by completing Desolus‘ many samey puzzles is exposition to a plot I just couldn’t vibe with. By not being overly complicated, and by having a story that just isn’t that interesting to pay attention to, Desolus just fails to stand out, despite the obvious amount of care put into it by its creator.

Desolus is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Switch 2.

A copy of Desolus was provided by the publisher.