Fatum Betula Review

Pretensions are a funny thing. To be affable in your approach is fine if accessibility is your objective, but hiding your true nature right from the get-go can only bring negative attention. It’s a certain fight or flight response, one which can only be rooted in vitriolic discourse, not because it’s immediately imperceptive, but because they specifically don’t understand it right away. It’s something which can affect Fatum Betula, that’s for sure.

This is one of the earliest releases from Texan developer Bryce Bucher, first released on PC in June of 2020. Since then, Bryce has had their work showcased in Dread X Collection 3, and with the help of budget publisher Baltoro Games — who also helped publish the similar low-poly cult hit Paratopic on Nintendo Switch — Fatum Betula has seen new life on both the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

You start in a church, with heavenly humming emanating from outside the walls. With a wax-sealed envelope on hand, you read the story of a girl who walks up stone stairs — the same stairs in front of you — and comes face-to-face with a malevolent gaze, after staring silent and still for some time. Following these steps will cause you to meet the same face, which tells you that the birch tree above you needs a new liquid to thrive, and doing so will provide a fate for the world you inhabit.

I realise that my description doesn’t give you much to go off, but ironically this is a game about context; not for the player, but for the overworld you’ll be exploring. Every character speaks more literally than you’d think, and there are never any cryptic connotations, as the game doesn’t want to seem or be above the player in regards to intelligence. You find out quickly that any image of a binary choice system — “good” and “bad”, “light” and “dark” — is irrelevant and you’re not there to judge, merely enable.

Before we get into that though, there’s the gameplay to talk about, which just barely escapes the walking simulators trend. You will find several people throughout the game who need some help with their ills, with items scattered across the overworld, some of which have many applications. With the game’s nine endings, you’ll be seeing which items are the ones that have more than one use.

Whilst dealing with a game that needs to arguably “stretch out” its proceedings, sometimes the answer or remedy can feel obtuse or awkwardly hidden in order to justify a longer time spent with it. For a lot of the time logged in Fatum Betula — this won’t happen, however — there are two instances where RNG is involved, with one of those moments being required for an ending. For me, it was a confusing thing to trigger in the first place, but at the same time, it felt like it was worth it just to see what would happen.

Part of the beauty in Fatum Betula is in how it unfolds, and the payoffs that follow. Your first playthrough without a walkthrough on hand will last around 20 minutes, as you come to grips with what the game wants you to understand. You’ll also more than likely come to terms with your first ending, one that can only be unequivocally described as morally “bad”. That may sound like a contradiction from what was said earlier, but it’s all part of the game’s bigger plan in wanting you to restart along with it.

The strongest theme in Fatum Betula is renewal. A raccoon is hungry, and it needs to consume something — anything to live. A man has lived his life, yet is unable to reach the sweet embrace of death. A fisherman has died, but is tired of the facade death is, instead hoping that nothingness is the answer. In this world, however, nothingness is another layer of the long con, because this isn’t their home.

It’s all very meta, and if it were any more fourth-wall breaking, the game would probably delete itself from your hard drive the instant you got the first “bad” ending. Despite previously stating that the game lacks any form of moral obligation, these words and ideas still exist in Fatum Betula. If it’s not to suck you in with the alluring premise, then it’s because it needs a host for Bryce Bucher’s philosophy to take effect.

One of the clearest inspirations for the game is LSD Dream Emulator, as is the case for a large part of the “Haunted PS1” movement. Low-poly horror games that focus on weaving nightmares out of hardware limitations, warped textures not being properly attached to surfaces, and very imaginative character design; Fatum Betula ticks nearly all of those boxes, except the actual “horror” part.

While horror is and always will be subjective, Fatum Betula seems more interested in providing an atmosphere of ethereal and blissful content rather than unnerving you with creepy imagery. A good example would be Sagebrush, where the circumstances can be grim, but you’re never witnessing it explicitly. Creepy imagery can still be there, and in spades, but it feels more like a fever dream than, say, a full-on bad trip. With that said, it is still an adventure of fear, anger, repetition, confusion, and elation.

It’s the elation that brings it home; the elation of context, and you can choose to accept or disregard it, in the name of art. It’s a game of beauty and discovery, introspection, and the “what ifs?” of creation and impact. Like all games, it is a miracle that it was able to come out in a state where it can be appreciated. But more so than others, Fatum Betula seems to celebrate this more with retrospection. In hindsight, there are interpretations that may go beyond the possibility of it being a goofy game paying tribute to one of the original PlayStation’s most infamous games, but like LSD Dream Emulator, Fatum Betula can be perceived as an experiment and an achievement.

As I sit in front of blank .rtf files and a half-finished project in Godot, Fatum Betula is something I’ve been periodically reminded of in the hubbub of understanding exactly what artistry is. It’s not a flurry of compromises and loose ends, it’s more answers to a problem that was never supposed to be seen as a problem in the first place. That’s what this game is: a celebration of everything you’ve ever created in the name of pleasure.

Paratopic. Sagebrush. Can Androids Pray? North. Mundaun. Fatum Betula joins these in the new-wave quest to challenge structure and narrative in-game development, with all of them hosting a singular question that you’ll ponder on while you sit in Heaven’s waiting room: did you try something different in life? After all, what do you create for?

For myself, and for a lot of us, we challenge ourselves and others.