It's a warm weekend and I've time free to game. So I thought I would work on the backlog. After a few broken titles, or indies with nothing really to say on how they work on the genre, I installed Betrayer.

The grey-scale appearance is rather striking, and did have me cautious, especially with the first blurry beach scene you come across. Then you walk into the forest and see the world moving.

It is the start of the early 17th century and you have arrived at the New World ready to join a new colony. You have arrive alone and the beach is empty. Save a few unlocked chests which contain a small amount of coin.

After a short walk through the forest you catch sight of a maiden in red, who shoots an arrow with a note into a post in front of you, warning you to turn back or becone stuck like she has.

So, I turned back and ended at the beach again with nothing to do. Instead I journeyed onward, found a small cracked bow and some arrows and made my way ahead.

A-Ha! A Spaniard! I'll show those European bastards what England is made of! I missed the shot and got his attention. He had a face of smoke and glowing red eyes. I killed him.

You meet up with the maiden at a English fort on the next zone. The fort is empty, a ash statues of the inhabitants can be found. Digging at soft dirt piles and hunting around, you eventually find a large bell. Connecting this to a pole at the entrance allows you to ring it.

And the world inverts. Light to Dark. Dark to light. It is now night time. By finding an Eye, Ear, and Tongue, you can communicate with the wraiths of the village.

They have forgotten who they are, and how they died. And you need to find out how. The maiden? She sees none of this and thinks you are talking to nothing.

...

After this the game quickly becomes a collectathon treasure hunt title.

It's a little disappointing really. The vibe of it up to this point is fantastic. But now you slowly arm and equip yourself, and fight undead Spaniards.

They show up everywhere when you are trying to find the fallen bodies of the people of the town, and the various clues and objects left at their demise. Some of them quite tragic.
And they respawn in new locations when you die. You die easily. The aim is to crouch and sneak up on them to kill them off, but sometimes your arrows and flintlocks ricochet off their armour and all you do is anger them as they move faster than you can escape.

My solution was to find a nice big tree and use it as a shield while I circle strafed them until they were dead. Er, deader-dead.

Eventually you find most of the points in the map. Talk to shadows to find out what happened and have them return to the fort. Loot more chests. Visit totem shrines and purge uncleanliness from the world and open a gate to the next zone... Where this all happens again.

All th etime being totally underpowered.

Betray is a decent game, let down by its combat. I would preferred much much less of it. Enemies being rarer and smarter, while fixed to a certain area. Instead of the menace that they are.

Switching day/night cycles and exploring with the limited colour pallet and audio scape is fantastic. Finding the clues to the dead so they can reclaim their memories has some good storytelling. The overall feeling of this title is great.

The fights, and invisible walls... Are not.

Worth a look, but it deserves that middle finger difficulty curve!

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (FPS Heroes 2 Bundle (2016))
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 17 February 2019
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows Vista 64-bit
Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core or better
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible with 1GB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460/AMD Radeon HD 6850)
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 4 GB available space
Sound Card: Windows compatible stereo sound card