CBS: Desolation is truly one of the most shockingly badly made games I've seen on Steam, and having reviewed well over 12,000 games, that's saying something. Basically this is some kind of ripoff of Frostpunk/Dwarf Fortress if you like, a colony survivor game where you direct colonists to build structures and keep them alive for however long.
Of course I'm being kind to the game by even putting it in the same sentence as real games like Frostpunk. The quality here is ridiculously bad... the menus are a nightmarish magazine collage of bad UI elements, the game itself is obtuse and barely works. I could see some resources but no directions for building or giving the colonists stuff to do.. it's uninituitive, but that's just because it's so badly made. This low quality pervades every aspect of the game, to the horrifically awful graphics, UI... it's just a train wreck, and the train wreck is the dumpster fire express.
One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience. In fact this game is so badly made I almost wish it was an asset flip, at least they "work" as games, no matter how shallow and empty those tech demos are.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
We can say with great certainty that this game is not an asset flip. This is because the assets are of such poor quality that no self respecting asset creator or artist would publish them under any circumstances.
Certainly, nobody likes to see asset recycling, stock assets are intended to be used as placeholders until superior assets can be created by the developer, but when we get what's worse than either stock assets being flipped or professional assets, it's a reason for gamers to go out of their way to avoid the product.
PC gamers will be insulted by the demand from the developer that a console peasant children's toy controller should be used, despite this being on PC. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're developing for, and must never, under any circumstances dictate to gamers how their games are to be experienced.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. CBS: Desolation has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Meet the Gang", for finishing the prologue, trivial to achieve, but less than 3 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch.
The poor quality of this game is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
CBS: Desolation has the preposterous price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
Build, defend your sanctum, gather resources and survive in this post apocalyptic simulated survival game.