Beautiful Ukraine

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Beautiful Ukraine is a family-friendly Jigsaw Puzzle game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2022. Produced in response to Russia’s violent and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Beautiful Ukraine’s creators claim that all profits from the sale of this game will be donated directly to charities that support those who have been displaced by this war.

Because this game’s very existence is directly tied to a continuing real-world war, I will make it a point to note that my review of this game is specifically about the quality of the game itself, and not the cause it seeks to benefit. If my opening paragraph didn’t make this abundantly clear, I fully support the right of the people of Ukraine to be independent of the machinations of Russia, and free from the violent atrocities that Russia has inflicted on that country. However, my feelings on this issue have nothing to do with whether or not this specific game is any good.

The presentation in Beautiful Ukraine is clean and colorful. This is a polished title, though that’s not necessarily any great accomplishment since this is, after all, a Jigsaw Puzzle game. The game makes use of some excellent, detailed photographs and video footage. This is backed by a gentle instrumental theme that I honestly felt got a bit too repetitive too quickly.

When it comes to content and options, there’s not a whole lot going on here. You have 17 photograph puzzles and 9 video puzzles (still images that become video footage once you complete the puzzle), with each of these playable with as few as 6 pieces or as many as 150. Players can have a friend join them to assist putting pieces in with a second controller, and there’s an option to turn on or off the music, and that’s it – there are no control options, display options, no way to turn off the “snap-to” feature, nothing.

At the very least, the controls we’re stuck with here are decent enough, with both traditional gamepad controls and touchscreen controls working fairly well. Players can press a button to reveal the puzzle’s picture behind your placed pieces if you need a hint, and you can press a different button to shuffle the currently-available pieces and get different ones.

This leads to one of my biggest issues with this game. Players cannot look over all of the available pieces, and are instead only given a small handful at a time, which they can shuffle in for other pieces. Even worse, the pieces they’re offered are not random – the game preferences offering players pieces that are close to each other or to the pieces you’ve already placed. This removes much of the challenge of solving a jigsaw puzzle – if you know the pieces you have are all usable within the same area, you don’t exactly need to search elsewhere, do you?

Because of the lack of options, and the way the game is basically cheating in the player’s favor, it’s hard to recommend Beautiful Ukraine on its merits as a Jigsaw Puzzle game. While the presentation is good and the cause it’s supporting is a just one, the actual gameplay itself is unfortunately lacking. If you’re a Jigsaw Puzzle aficionado who wants to support Ukrainian refugees while enjoying some puzzles, I think you’ll probably find this game to be decent enough. But if you’re looking at this game based on its qualities as an actual game, I suspect you’ll find it somewhat lacking.

tl;dr – Beautiful Ukraine is a family-friendly Jigsaw Puzzle game produced in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with all profits to be donated to charities to help the country’s displaced people. While this game may be worth getting to support a good cause, the game itself is lacking in a few key areas. The presentation and the puzzles’ photographs here are quite good, but the lack of options and the way the game essentially cheats in the player’s favor both left me disappointed.

Grade: C-

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