Fatum Betula

Fatum Betula is a masterclass in world building and atmosphere. It fills you with a sense of melancholy, nostalgia, and curiosity that's difficult to put into words. The concept of a dying world telling its own story works incredibly well, and the game's design comes close to perfect. Throughout my playthrough, it made me feel emotions that are almost impossible to describe. Few games capture that quiet, reflective feeling as effectively as Fatum Betula, and that's what makes it so memorable.

Whilst excellently aesthetically and phonically curated, the actual game a layer below is utterly artless. Fatum Betula is an ornate machination performing the song and dance that it believes meaning and substance are consequent to; it is akin to contemporary horror films, though even lacking even the scary bits they may at least offer. Whilst the LSD: Dream Emulator influence is unsubtle, it fails to grasp what makes that game function, much less meaningful, and much less important. It is a hopeless bundle of ideas arranged without considerations for consequence nor effect, and it does not seem to be aware of that.

It was somewhat fun at first, but later I found it mostly boring and disgusting. I enjoy trying this type of game, but I was disappointed with this one. It seems they just pieced together some small ideas and didn't do anything more than that; in short, the more you play, the less you feel there's any point in continuing. Maybe it could have been better, but they didn't. Also, some of the content triggered traumatic memories for me. They'll tell you at some point: you'll go to hell in real life. I don't like it, and I don't need to endure that kind of inexplicable, subtle malice.

This game made me reflect about my life so many times its insane, I have like 15 hours on the Switch from all the times I've just stayed listening to the music or replayed to get a different interpretation, favorite game of all times, made me go out there and be real.

it was okay. i feel like this is the type of game that i should be really vibing with but something was off about it. i generally enjoyed the experience and i did get what i paid for, but i am still gonna list the bad stuff because i have always held the opinion that negative reviews are inherently more interesting and indepth than positive ones. i think the #1 biggest thing that felt off was how non-interactive the world is. you can pour liquids into ponds and rivers and lakes to taint them, but also turn them into a renewable source of that precious liquid you found. i thought that game mechanic was gonna go somewhere but when you leave a room and come back, it just becomes pure water as if nothing happened. you can poke someone with a fishing rod in the eye and their dialogue will be the same. you can taint every water source with blood and nothing happens. you can strike npcs, birds, walls, trees, most things with a blade and there will be no response, not even a *CLANG* sound. there were about 3 things i found that were put into the game for flavor and those were [spoiler]choosing between killing the beast with the blade or a poisonous fish, replacing the water in the ocean with oil OR poison to kill the same wall of seaweed (game really couldve done more stuff with changing the ocean water with different liquids imo,) and also feeding the beast with a corrupt fish for a small event, but then that is the only use for that corrupt fish which was sad.[/spoiler] alternative solutions to get things done and also some sidequests/events that add flavor and variety to what you can do in the world would have made it feel much more alive. there are also a couple more things i did not like, but these are subjective. i was expecting several items to have more than 1 use, so i went around throwing my jar at random stuff around. i think one example of a mind blowing thing that could have happened would be if, [spoiler]since the jar stuffs whatever is remembered by a dead person inside it, what if you killed an npc with the blade and then threw the jar at an object that they were reminiscing about in their dialogue?[/spoiler] maybe i am expecting too much because i have been pondering lately about how you could do various cool things with this kind of gameplay. i think it is still a pretty decent game worth checking out and im glad that other people have gotten more value out of it than i have. it still has its moments, both profound and scary, but you could always push this type of thing further if you wanted to. edit: oh yea i almost forgot to say there are for sure some things that you need a guide for and you wouldnt figure out unless you got real lucky or you were a psycho. the two things i had to look up were [spoiler]the tomato soup and free will endings.[/spoiler].

You'll be doing yourself a disservice by not playing this game. Probably one of the most interesting and fun 3 hours I've ever had. It has some of my fav character designs ever too icl

A gorgeous little game that's fun to come back to every once in a while. It still resonates with me years later!

Это было определённо что-то, и это мне определённо понравилось