Betrayer: Colonial Horror

Apparently the realm of the dead can be accessed by ringing a bell, why not?

It's rare when a piece of media attempts to explore the mindset of a different time, as it's pretty difficult to do without becoming lost in this fantasy of a bygone era, and on top of this there is always the risk of the intent being misunderstood. Betrayer as a game stood out to me, for while it admittedly was not terribly good, it stood out to me for being able to effectively tap into the fear that likely filled the English colonists on the East coast at the beginning of England's colonization of the new world. 

Betrayer starts mysteriously as you wake up on a secluded beach with a merchant ship retreating into the distance. As you head inland, you encounter a mysterious girl in a red cloak, as well as a few English settlements that are completely deserted, only being inhabited by former townsfolk who are now either ghosts or stone/ash statues. The whole story is a mystery, and to tell the truth I didn't find it terribly interesting/compelling, much of it really boiled down to colonists panicking because two girls went over to check out the local tribe of Indians despite being explicitly asked not to. It also didn't help that after reaching the final area I then had to go back and complete all the side quests in order to get the ending. Also present are bestial spaniards clad in armor with glowing red eyes that roam the wilderness alongside hooting native Americans made of fire and ash, which interest me historically. Now I'm not going to claim that roaring Spanish conquistadors and silent fire natives are in any way accurate, but their imposing presence served as an effective tool for getting the player into the frightened mindset of an early English colonist. On top of the alien culture of the indigenous peoples there, the nearest European people to the English would be their sworn enemies: the Spanish, who could easily wipe out any English colony they found. This is also not to mention the sectarian hatred of the English towards the Spanish (and vice versa). I have to say I quite enjoyed that aspect of Betrayer, trading historical accuracy for authentic authenticity. Weapons also follow the same pattern, with some changes for the purposes of 'fun' combat. Health is restored through water skins, and the only way to refill these is to find a water barrel, and upgrading your number of uses is by literally buying/finding more water skins. Weapons are split between bows and guns, with the short and longbows functioning as expected. However, the guns are interesting in that they function very much like guns in the period, being loud as hell, inaccurate, and taking a long time to reload. Reloading these guns takes a long time in terms in game time (five plus seconds, practically an eternity), but it's balanced by the fact that the Spaniards' guns function the same way. On several occasions I found myself facing one of these ghastly conquistadors with the both of us frantically reloading our pistols, only to miss our shots again! Probably frustrating to the average person, but I found it inexplicably hilarious.

Just as soon as I finish loading this musket, you're in for it bucko.

I really don't have much to say about Betrayer's music or appearance, it's not an especially great looking game, though there's two stand out features. The first is that the wilderness areas actually look like wilderness despite the areas not being very large, and are surprisingly easy to get lost in. The foliage is dense, and the native-appearing enemies blend in quite well, heightening the tension when they're present. The second point where Betrayer stood out to me was its chromatic aberration. By default the game is in black and white with red being the only other color, which makes important objects and the girl in the red cloak stand out, but in my opinion it looks pretty ugly and oversaturated. Surprisingly, it's configurable in the pause menu and I was able to get the game to be in color (all colors except red are desaturated), which makes the game look surprisingly good. It's the little things.

I personally somewhat liked Betrayer, but to be honest you wouldn't miss anything if you don't pick it up. As much as I liked the historically authentic part of it, I'd say that even that alone is probably not worth the five dollar asking price. It's a game that caught my attention as I was playing, but I'm reasonably confident that I won't pick Betrayer up again in the near or distant future, there's just not much reason to for me.

It wasn't exactly the experience of a haunted Jamestown that I was looking for, but at least I got a few scant glimpses of the setting.

Next up I'll be doing a series of three-in-one reviews to get me caught up because my backlog is pretty massive fro being a shut-in and neglecting these.