Fatum Betula finds virtue in the 32-bit generation. It is impossible to return to the ethos that powered games from a quarter century ago, but Fatum Betula captures their spirit and respects their integrity. The wild sense of experimentation, the natural invitation to curiosity, and the harsh beauty imposed by technical limitations shine through every austere texture and restrained polygon.
Fatum Betula has all the markings of a game from the generation that birthed the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. Low resolution textures are stretched across collections of severely limited polygons. Objectives are vague but not inscrutable. Turbulent geography is used to conceal hidden pathways and obscure fine detail. The menu and save systems are also archaic and cumbersome, although I’m not sure that one was intended as material to the experience. If it weren’t for the generous draw distance and a handful of other tells, Fatum Betula may be indistinguishable from King’s Field, Virtual Hydlide, or any experimental early 32-bit game.
After a decade of 8-bit and 16-bit retro-styled games dominating the indie space, some variety of a low-poly renaissance was inevitable. Back in 1995 was early to the party in 2016, but then the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc (of which Fatum Betula was a member) debuted last year and suggested a niche collective could evolve into a genuine movement. There’s room in this space for applying modern design philosophy to obsolete trappings and fresh inspiration for archaic paradigms. A new game can look old and an old looking game can feel new.
Fatum Betula is less interested in homage and more focused on indulgence. Getting lost inside of its limited but highly atmospheric low poly wonderland is its invitation. Its lingering collection of oddities, and mysteries that inevitably fall out of agency and experimentation, are the hooks to keep players around. The dozen or so 3D spaces Fatum Betula exhibits look crude by today’s standards, sure, but they’re beaming with the potential of the unknown. Something is there. Patience and diligence may be the only barriers for players trying to figure it out. Fatum Betula is always grinning at its own enigma.
It opens in a modest chamber designed to idolize a humble tree. Staring into the abyss draws out a face. The face speaks. The player is given a set of three vials and let go into Fatum Betula’s miniscule open world. There are a handful of tools to collect, some conscious beings to interact with, and a bed where you can go to sleep and wake up into a corrupted slice of 32-bit’s finest graphical nightmare. I gasped and then smiled when that happened.
It’s possible to play Fatum Betula and accomplish zero of its invisible objectives. There are two different “interact” buttons and something as simple as not getting close enough to an object might not trigger a desired reaction. If you somehow never figure out how to put anything other than water in your set of vials, there’s almost nothing to do beyond look around. Fatum Betula is accessible but not necessarily interested in whether or not the player digs through every weird corner of its strange world.
Everything can be found with a guide (which I eventually did, after about ninety minutes of goofing around). There were points of interest I could have discovered with a bit more diligence and others I would have never found in my natural life. But you don’t have to find everything. It may be rose colored glasses, but games of yesteryear didn’t seem to be begging players to never put it down. It’s incidental if you find everything. Fatum Betula just wants players to find something they can connect with.
I am thirty-seven years old and I remember that era fondly. I co-host a labyrinthine podcast series that has exhaustively deconstructed several games of the era. What most amazes me about Fatum Betula is it was, according to their Twitter profile, produced by a person who is just twenty years old. I don’t think that Fatum Betula is fueled by nostalgia, like it would be if anyone my age set out to make a game like this. It seems like its creator was genuinely fascinated by the spaces from games made before they were born and wanted to make a world like it to call their own. It’s an organic creation rather than an assemblage of half remembered ideas and vain attempts at capturing youth. I don’t know that it would have been possible for anyone over twenty to make Fatum Betula.
I finished every ending of Fatum Betula and explored everything I could find. The prose was beautifully unrefined and earnest. The format of the endings called back to the high-context, high-sensation closers that swept through Twisted Metal and other games in their creative adolescence. For its limited time, I played Fatum Betula like I play LSD: Dream Emulator. I want to be in this place, and hopefully more places like, just to see what it’s capable of hiding. I may always find something new.
Fatum Betula finds virtue in the 32-bit generation. It is impossible to return to the ethos that powered games from a quarter century ago, but Fatum Betula captures their spirit and respects their integrity. The wild sense of experimentation, the natural invitation to curiosity, and the harsh beauty imposed by technical limitations shine through every austere texture and restrained polygon.
