Fatum Betula is…going to be an acquired taste. Styled as a (very) short narrative adventure with retro visuals and light puzzles, it’s the kind of game that will put off as many as it entertains. I fall somewhere in the middle; I appreciate the aesthetic and effort, but I also don’t think I could wholly recommend it to the average player.
When I say short, I mean short. A single run through can take as little as maybe five minutes. The idea here is that replayability is key, encouraging us to play through several times to see all the endings. However, my first session was a bit longer thanks to not really understanding what the game was going for. Once I’d figured it out though, I saw almost all of the games 10 endings in under an hour.
The premise is bizarre from the off, and something that instantly had me interested. In our inventory we find our first clue as to what to do – I won’t ruin an already lean experience – and from there we’re kind of let loose in a small area to, well, find what we find. Despite there only being a handful of areas to look around there’s a surprising amount of interconnected elements that serve us in getting those multiple endings. Some are obvious while others take a little bit of logical thinking, though I’d emphasise the little bit in that statement.
This isn’t your average narrative adventure game at all. Rather, the focus is on telling a short, abstract tale that confuses as much as anything. It can feel a little too overdone at points, with the weirdness factor in one area feeling a bit on the nose in terms of ‘we just put this in here to be odd’. The rest of the areas fare better overall, and even despite the depressing tone of the dialogue and themes I did appreciate the way hints as to how to solve the light puzzles were woven within the text. They’re perhaps not the subtlest hints in the world but they still were well enough written that I didn’t mind so much. Figure out what we need to get an ending and we’re presented with what can only be described as between strange and fever-dream type cutscenes. Some try to posit deeper meaning to them while others are just…odd. As I say, it’ll be an acquired taste.
Clearly the most obvious selling point though are the visuals. Being an older gamer, I remember when these 32-bit graphics were the best we’d ever seen, and Baltoro Games have stuck to the retro aesthetic almost perfectly. From chunky textures to polygonal warping, basic models and even displaying at a 4:3 ratio, it looks and plays exactly how I remember titles of the Playstation and Saturn era did. I’d be hesitant to say it looks good, but I appreciated this style and how well they pulled it off.
What I didn’t appreciate though is the 1995-era interface that came with the visuals. A needlessly clunky menu system manages to be an annoyance in even in a five minute game, with even trying to load a game being somewhat obtuse (we need to start a new game, press Y to save, then flick the not obviously flickable save toggle to load to carry on from a save point). Interacting with objects is a single button press, but there’s also an element of guesswork in what we can and can’t use or interact with. Again, emblematic of the era but not quite so welcome today.
Conclusion
That’s not to say I didn’t get any enjoyment out of Fatum Betula. Again, I appreciated the retro visual style, and for all the weirdness of the experience I found myself wanting to see what the next ending would bring. That it is so short to run through is a blessing, but once more I’m not sure I could recommend this to anyone who isn’t really into esoteric, indie experiences.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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