Fatum Betula [Xbox]

Developed by Bryce Bucher, Fatum Betula is a complete fever dream of a game. It’s a classic ‘wander around the world and try to piece things together’ type game, where there are strange encounters and unusual environments for you to explore. As the game begins you are introduced to the ‘Fatum Betula’ or ‘Fate Birch’, by a bizarre creature with a horrifying vertical mouth, and told of how the tree must be ‘fed’ in order to lead the world to whatever its fate may be. The huge creature then proceeds to give you three vials to go off and collect some form of liquid for the tree to thrive, but it’s up to you what you choose.

There’s no clear direction in Fatum Betula, instead your progression will be tied to your exploration, and information you find from NPCs and scribbled notes lying around, as these might help to give a hint on things you can try, or items you can use and interact with. There’s a hub area that leads out to a few differently themed, and equally as uncomfortable sections, in which you’ll come across a variety of weird things. There’s an area with a lake and a structure containing a bed, that when you sleep in will transport you to an alternate version of the area - an acid trip nightmare with bright pink skies and huge kanji letters all around, and a disturbing NPC with their guts hanging out. Other areas resemble an autumnal forest, or deep at the bottom of the ocean, or even an uncanny suburbian nightmare.

With PS1 era visuals, focusing on harsh edges and strangely eerie textures, the world has a distinctly creepy vibe, even in areas of relative peace. NPCs range from a hungry cat-like ‘beast’ (that we later discovered is actually a raccoon), to a deep sea miner relaxing on the beach, looking over the beauty of the sea - and who ‘literally hates you’ if you put anything in the water. The soundtrack, composed by Simone Peltier, is a bizarre mix of soothing, enchanting and downright unsettling, and it’s very well matched to each of the areas. Some of the tracks in particular are truly haunting, and stay imprinted in your brain long after you’ve completed the game in full, which can be done in only a few short hours.

You’ve got a bunch of different endings to unlock, with a lot of trial and error required to figure out just what needs to be done in order to trigger them. The main thing is that the birch has to be ‘fed’ with different things, so each of the liquids you’ll pick up in your vials through the course of the game can be used to water the birch, leading to different endings. You might gain ‘Beast Blood’ by killing the raccoon; or ‘Plant Growth’ by mixing the aforementioned blood with ‘Liquid Bone’ that you’ll receive as a reward from an NPC - and testing out to see just what is possible will lead to potential new outcomes.

There’s a really cool secret ending that you can find, gaining you access to a video of the developer, Bryce, looking over the game files and giving a bit of behind-the-scenes info about certain choices he made during development, as well as showing some of the little references and stuff that he has hidden throughout the game. It ended up being a fair bit longer than we expected, but was really interesting to watch, particularly coming from a non-game-developer viewpoint.

It’s not a long game by any means, but it’s an enjoyable trip nonetheless. Priced at £4.99 on the Xbox Store, it’s a great price point for the amount of time you’ll spend with it - any more expensive and it probably wouldn’t quite be worth it, but where it stands is perfect, and makes it well worth picking up.

In the end, we decided to give Fatum Betula the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.

Are you interested in Fatum Betula? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Baltoro Games for the Fatum Betula Xbox review code!