Since Jesse Bullington’s amazing medieval horror-fantasy novels, and particularly since The VVitch, I’ve been desperate for more colonial Weird horror. So Betrayer got a lot of buy-in from me just by being exactly what I was looking for. It has a lot going for it. Starting on a shipwrecked beach, you work your way through a very early colonial landscape with only a smattering of habitations and forts, from a time when Brits and Spaniards competed for control of the same turf.
The other striking thing about Betrayer is its aesthetic. It goes for a hard black and white palette, with smatterings of red for important stuff. Combined with a generally detailed and plant-rich environment, this can make for some pretty evocative moments, with vague black shapes looming on the horizon and a desaturated world rife with potential dangers. It does get fairly harsh, so I ended up playing most of the game with color turned on. That’s a fair choice, particularly because the main premise involves an “upside-down” world with its own separate black and white palette (somehow less hard on the eyes); having the normal world in color creates a nice bit of contrast.
The problem with Betrayer is that it isn’t put together well enough to capitalize on its premise. All the elements of a good game are here. The environments feel full of dread and promise. The mythology is a bit basic but isn’t daft enough that it couldn’t be good with the right touch. There are lots of characters and interacting storylines and factions. And the combat, while frustrating at times, grew on me a lot and can be quite satisfying. More than anything, the sound design is exceptional, from the scrapes and shakes of loading a musket with powder and shot to the guttural oomph of blasting a skeleton apart with a flintlock to the more haunting noises. The sound design does much of the heavy lifting that keeps the aesthetic engaging as much as it is. There’s even a button that does nothing but play some Lustmorde-style ghost noises, which is great but I could never figure out what mechanical significance it might have.
The problems are manifold, but can be summed up as an underwhelming execution and presentation of practically everything. Combat feels good. . . except you have to constantly hit toggle the sprint button to move at a reasonable speed. Encounters can be satisfying, but practically none of them have what you might call design”--most of them involve backpedalling as a crowd of enemies runs toward you on a flat or slightly hilly open field. The game is way too short for practically every area to rely on clearing mobs from checkpoints as its principle gameplay goal. Every map is handcrafted, and there’s no reason that shouldn’t involve unique encounter design with narrative relevance. The writing is Weird/Ghost horror 101, without the barest pretense of atmosphere or pacing, their limited characterization surviving the mill of being chopped up and picked up in random orders only through adherence to the most transparent tropes.
But other than the level design, all of the systems are there, and it feels like a good first draft. Just a shame it wasn’t capitalized on with a bit more polish. I did finish it, in part because I was hoping it might get better, and in part because the combat is satisfying enough and the reward loop is pretty effective. The end does deliver a fairly evocative final area, but it also brings out the worst of the issues in pacing and storytelling (fast travel did them no favors here). I’m not entirely certain I even completed the main storyline, and couldn’t figure out how to progress a few of the side investigations as well. Ultimately, it’s probably not worth playing unless you’re desperate for some colonial horror in game form.