The Museum of Beautiful Destruction
The museum at sunset: a grand old building with a green dome and lit windows, a red carpet up the front steps, one tower in scaffolding and a small worker in a yellow hard hat at the foot of the steps.

The Museum of Beautiful Destruction

Break Things. Find Peace.

You came about the caretaker's job. They handed you a hammer. Take 130 beautiful walls apart, one brick at a time, and find out what has been behind them all this time. Nobody at the museum will tell you why. If you ask, they promote you.

Play the playtest Watch the trailer

Coming to Steam. The playtest runs in your browser, on a computer or a phone.

Situations vacant

Caretaker Wanted

Small museum, quiet work, light maintenance. Must have own hat. Apply in person.

The job

You are a perfectly ordinary builder in a yellow hard hat. You came about the caretaker's job, and you have somehow become the museum's Junior Demolition Conservator. You have been issued one wooden mallet.

The Museum of Beautiful Destruction is a cozy pixel-art game about taking walls apart, one brick at a time, to find out what has been behind them. The museum takes this work very seriously. Nobody will say why.

In motion

The trailer

Now showing

130 walls, and something behind every one

Someone had bricked up the morning. Behind the ice, the sky had been dancing the whole time. Behind the fairground, it was all still turning. Every wall hides its own small, quiet view, and you are the first to see it in a long while.

There is no timer, and nothing to lose. Hit a brick. Hit it again. Cut a piece loose and it drops. When the last of it comes down, a cleaning robot in a painted dress takes the rubble away, and you get to stand there and look.

A grey stone wall half taken down, with a stained-glass window in every colour showing through.
The Glass ChapelThe light had been waiting in there, all those colours.
A wall of ice bricks breaking away to show the northern lights over a dark pine forest.
The Ice WallThe sky had been dancing the whole time.
A red brick wall coming down in front of a fairground at night, with a lit Ferris wheel.
The FairgroundIt was still turning. Nobody had told it to stop.
A rainbow over a small village, framed by the arch where a wall used to be.
The Rain PorchIt was only there for a minute.
Brick and Mortar, the hardware store: tools on a pegboard with price tags, and the worker beside a door marked Private.

Next door

A hardware store that should know better

Walls pay by the job, and the job pays for better tools. Brick & Mortar has eight on the pegboard, from the Wooden Mallet to a Concrete Cutter that nobody has ever needed, and each one takes a wall apart in its own way. The Crowbar levers out a whole cluster. The Saw runs down a row, end to end. The Jackhammer sees to everything nearby by itself.

There is also a door marked Private. Behind it sits an old lady with some stock of her own, and an Orbital Strike she will not explain.

Visitor information

A museum, with everything that implies

The Entrance Hall: a red carpet up to a grand doorway under the museum's name, with the directory board on the left.

Directory

Grand Gallery
Up
Keeps every wall you have conserved, in sixteen exhibitions.
Lost and Found
Left
Keeps the 90 things people left inside them. It would like you to stop bringing them in.
Gift Shop
Right
Open by mistake. It will sell you your own rubble.
Museum Café
Down
A jukebox, a notice board, a cake from 1974 and an owner with seven moods. He asked a question once. They promoted him.
Museum Operations
Desk
Choose your walls, read your post and watch the security cameras.
Visitors today
1
It is usually you.
The Museum Café, with its menu board, a jukebox and a notice board of museum news.
The Museum Café
The Grand Gallery, where finished walls hang as framed exhibits.
The Grand Gallery
Museum Operations: the staff terminal on the ticket desk, showing today's assignments.
Museum Operations
The Gift Shop, under a sign that reads I Broke It At The Museum.
The Gift Shop
A Notice of Promotion to Senior Structural Curator, stamped with a cat's paw print.

Personnel

A career

You will rise from Junior Demolition Conservator to Vice President of Nothing, and nobody will tell you what any of it means.

Your supervisor stepped out for five minutes in 1974. A cat called the Founder is keeping an eye on you. There is no Drawer 417. Please do not open it.

House rules

Take your time

  • Played with a mouse, or one finger on a phone
  • Walls from Small to Super Large, up to five layers deep
  • Choose your own music, instruments and hit sounds
  • Every sound in the game is made in code
  • No timer, and nothing to lose
  • After the last wall, the Quiet Walls go on for as long as you do

The Museum of Beautiful Destruction

Admit One

Opening hours
Always
Admission
Free
Damages
Extra

No. 000417

Playtest

The museum is open for a playtest

Play it in your browser, on a computer or on a phone held upright. Your progress stays in the browser you play in.

It is a playtest, so things will change, and some things will break that are not supposed to. Tell us what you find at hello@museumofdestruction.com.

Enter the museum

Press

Fact sheet

Game
The Museum of Beautiful Destruction
Developer
Vizsla Studios
Release
Coming to Steam. Date to be announced.
Platforms
Windows, on Steam. The playtest runs in the browser.
Languages
English
Contact
hello@museumofdestruction.com

Downloads

  • LogoPNG, transparent, 1280 × 720
  • Key artPNG, 3840 × 1240, no text
  • CapsulePNG, 1232 × 706
  • TrailerMP4, 720p, 55 seconds
  • ScreenshotsEvery picture on this page opens at 1920 × 1080