Fatum Betula is an indie game developed by Bryce Bucher, a 24-year-old Texan. Released on June 20, 2020, it was part of a compilation of low-poly horror games called Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020. The concept was to gather demos sharing the same aesthetic, with Fatum Betula standing out as a flagship title.
The game later received a self-published Switch version — the one we experienced — and a release on the Xbox store via publisher Baltoro Games.
From the very first moments, players are plunged into a dreamlike, strange, and inexplicable world. Right from the start, you find yourself in the heart of a church that houses a birch tree. Its roots are submerged in a pool that serves as the cornerstone of the adventure — the game's title already hinting at this: Fatum Betula literally means “the fate of the birch”.
As you stay close to the tree, the first creature of the journey appears. This initial encounter reveals more about your role — an "agent of fate". By nourishing the birch with various liquids found throughout the quest, you ultimately decide the world’s future.
“The plant is our fate, and its water our fuel.
I will provide you with the tools to make alterations.
Do whatever you must, but…
Don’t feed it with what you bleed.”
The game features ten different endings, ten paths, and several NPCs encountered across unique zones. These characters share their stories and worldviews in simple, often cryptic ways.
The atmosphere plays a crucial role in how the game is received, especially its sound design, crafted by Simone Peltier — known for other indie projects like Disparity Of The Dead (2021) and Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia (2022). The Fatum Betula soundtrack consists of five tracks that add to the game’s mysticism, revolving around the theme of “fate.”
Visually, the game draws inspiration from Nintendo 64 and PlayStation titles such as LSD: Dream Emulator (1998) and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000), hallmark examples of early polygonal 3D. With only one action button, an inventory for storing vials of liquids, and a few items collected to advance the story, Fatum Betula embraces minimalism. This minimalism makes the player’s experience unique, pushing them to interpret the NPCs’ dialogue, to feel the environments, and to absorb the game’s overall atmosphere.
The aim of this episode, Regards Croisés, is to share the interpretations and feelings of two players through their experience. This personal and subjective analysis questions our relationship with the medium.
SLOT 1 / MASSA187
What struck me most during my playthrough was the relationship between the alchemist and the immortal skeleton, met early on.
First, there’s the alchemist, hiding at the bottom of a poorly lit library well. He tells me he’s cursed, unable to ever open the wooden doors imprisoning him. To be freed, he needs the skull of an immortal, which would allow him to create his greatest work — immortality for himself.
“My final wish is to create something without death.”
“We may never have to meet death.”
Not far from the library, inside a makeshift shack, I meet the other character — or rather, what remains of him. Unlike the alchemist, the immortal doesn’t embrace eternal life.
“I’m not dead…
I nearly forgot how to speak in my time here.
Long ago I was gifted immortality.
At first I was relieved.
But 50 years in…
I began to rot.
I became hungry, but too weak to hunt.
I can only stare at this wall.
I forgot how to think. I forgot meaning.
Please don’t leave me here.
If you do, please come back to kill me.”
He was granted immortality — but at what cost ? Immortality is a double-edged sword — a cursed gift that slowly detaches him from his mortal origin, causing physical decay and mental emptiness. Death becomes his only salvation, reinforcing the ideal of mortality as intrinsic to humanity. The speech of this character reminds me of a passage from On the Heights of Despair by Emil Cioran: “When the weight of eternity presses upon you, when you hear the tick-tock of a clock or the beating of seconds, how can one not feel the inanity of the passage of time and the senselessness of becoming?” The condition of the immortal is an endless suspension, both physical and psychic, leaving the being to decay indefinitely. Enduring one’s own existence then becomes an agony that even death cannot relieve. His monologue drips with pure despair. When I collect the immortal’s skull and deliver it to the alchemist, he achieves immortality, and says to me:
“What do you plan to do with eternity?
I’m going to write a book for my mother.
She never liked my writing.
Maybe I can change her mind.
I have all the time in the world to try…”
All that pride and arrogance to conquer death, only to focus on winning over his mother’s approval — a surprisingly prosaic ambition, and perhaps the true reason behind his quest. Approaching this late in my playthrough, I felt cynical: eternity might be the heaviest burden one can bear in this world. — guess the skeleton settled it for me…
Another concept that disturbed me was the illusion of free will, especially confirmed in the final ending — or what resembles one. Each restart of the game distanced me from the character I controlled. Early on, I felt I had full control, but as I progressed, I began to feel conditioned — by the birch, or by the chance encounters with the NPCs — and my choices felt less meaningful. It feels like I’m just here to reveal the ills of this precarious world, and to trigger the ending — or what comes next — it deserves.
In the final act, I found myself on a moon-like surface, interacting with the moon itself:
“You may have witnessed many explanations for our reality.
However, your journey for truth will now lie in its grave.
For I am God.
I created this world recently. Exactly as it is now.
Its past is merely an illusion.
It is a reality that I alone am responsible for.
Rejoice, you are the only being with free will.
Even the air itself acts on my script.
We must trust in my omnipotence,
Regardless, you were made to determine this land’s fate.
And your path has led to me…
I am most pleased with this result.
Take this, and we can make a land of indeterminate future.
Feel good child. You have made them all real…”
This encounter confirmed my suspicions: we were tasked by a god-like entity to decide the fate of the world it created and abandoned. I’m the only who possesses free will; everyone and everything else follows the script. There’s a clear analogy here between God and the game developer — the world is their program, and we, the players, have only the freedom to explore, interact, and reflect. In the end, we’re just an agent — a factor that triggers the future. Only God has the power to influence the world’s future, yet He chooses to task a being like us — the player — with judging the others — the NPCs — in his place. We’re here only to observe…
I get the sense that destiny also haunts our character’s actions. Taking away or granting someone free will calls into question the very meaning of the concept itself.
After this confrontation, I experienced ludonarrative dissonance (see Clint Hocking’s article on Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock). I felt deceived, robbed of a pseudo free will the game pretended to give me. The moon’s speech erased the freedom I thought I had, revealing that the game used me to legitimize its own conclusions.
SLOT 2 / REDKOFFEE
I started playing Fatum Betula on a Sunday and finished it by Friday. I didn’t play every day but often had long sessions. My recent life experiences deeply influenced my play, and the game affected my life in turn — the two intertwined. The moods blended, sometimes comforting, sometimes unsettling, alongside our shared reflections. I loved this mirror effect.
What impacted me most was the atmosphere. In Fatum Betula, you endlessly roam familiar zones — forests, gardens, underwater realms, suburbs — occasionally entering houses, churches, and libraries. The anthropomorphic NPCs are strange but grounded, creating a sense of reality. This atmosphere — at once real, strange, and unfamiliar — both fascinated and unsettled me. I experienced the uncanny.
The uncanny is “the psychological experience of an event or thing that is disturbing in a way that feels strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious.” Freud first used the term Das Unheimliche in 1919, combining the ideas of “home/familiarity” and “secret/hidden.” The English “uncanny” captures this feeling of intellectual uncertainty about whether something is alive or not.
This sensation stayed with me throughout the game — a blend of familiarity and discomfort. Several factors explain this.
First, the repetition inherent in the game: ten endings, each requiring restarts from the hub. Nothing changes except new paths to discover, often after wandering and repeating the same interactions with NPCs. There’s a constant tension between known and unknown, which you must trigger without clear instructions.
The characters are deformed, grotesque and often disillusioned. They hold human traits and philosophies but remain somehow otherworldly, like ghosts, which unsettles the player’s perception.
The animist philosophy underlying the game adds to the uncanny. It’s repeatedly hinted at by the hub’s monster, who appears after each ending:
“Consider this tree and our land to be one and the same; a synecdoche.”
This monster embodies the idea that everything has a soul, that everything is alive: beings, nature, elements and so on. All these forms of life are interconnected and meaningful. There are implicit rules between all living things: exchange – giving and receiving. As Nerval wrote in Aurélia: “Everything lives, everything acts, everything corresponds.” This is exactly what happens in the game. We are encouraged to try interacting with everything we encounter – objects, plants, NPCs – and to constantly ask ourselves: what is alive? What is not?
Let’s consider some zones.
The suburbs hit first: rows of identical houses, meant to be lived in, yet empty and lifeless. Interiors are uniform and frozen, creating a mental trap of endless loops and eerie silence — a strangely uncanny everyday world.
The temple zone feels peaceful: a lake with fish, a quiet home, birdsong. But the calm is deceptive. It’s actually the most nightmarish place, reminiscent of Kafka’s The Trial, where Joseph K. is trapped in absurd, meaningless bureaucratic procedures. Like Joseph K., you wander faceless, without reflection or identity. Although your actions matter, the camera perspective denies you a self-image, deepening the uncanny sensation.
Sounds in the game also heighten the uncanny: liquid being drawn, muffled breaths, chirping, birdsong, or replaced by an ambient soundtrack, sometimes unsettling. The noises of things are ever-present. The natural sounds bring both calm and nervous agitation — the raw reality is exposed. Reality is no longer hidden.
For me, calm is also a form of truth, a psychological test. Without any noise or entertainment, what does one think about? One can be confronted with the past, with what has been repressed. What does calm reveal in each of us?
Finally, the low-poly aesthetic plays a role in this uncanny atmosphere. Above all, Fatum Betula evokes a subtle anxiety — the uncanny’s core feeling — one that can surface anytime in daily life. The game taught me not to fear it but to accept, not run, and even appreciate it, sometimes.
Bryce Bucher's interview
At what point in your life, or under what circumstances, did the idea to start developing Fatum Betula come to you? What is the origin of the game, and what place does it hold for you personally?
I was walking home one day, thinking about the game Iketsuki, and it struck me that I really wanted to make a game that similarly explores a central, surreal mechanic. The birch grew from that seed.
What changes or improvements would you have made if you had more resources? Did you have the ambition to include something else, or do you feel you fully explored the themes you wanted to address?
Fatum Betula was started as a small side project for Protagoras Bleeds, so I don't really think I would've expanded its scope. The game grew as I was making it, so there was never really any ambition for it to be more than it is.
My intention was that there are 3 different "true" endings that invalidate each other. The god ending (being one of those 3 endings) was actually added last minute during a period of time when the game was considered done, but I was waiting for my release window. I kind of regret that people view it as the one true ending. I meant for it to give that impression without actually being a truly final ending.
What was your relationship like with the people you collaborated with during the development of the game (composer Simone Peltier, Oil painter Athan Shields... ), and how did the process go?
I've been very close with Simone for a long time, and I continue to be. We will definitely collaborate a lot more in the future. They understand me better than anyone else in the world, and their music is a big part of what makes Fatum Betula what it is. Athan Shields originally came on board to help pretty heavily with the art for Protagoras Bleeds, and he always did an amazing job. He was very enthusiastic about working on a video game, and his passion has shined through with all of the work he's done. For the painting in Fatum Betula, he did a bunch of research to make it appropriate for the culture and era it was meant to represent. It was a style he hadn't tried before, and I think he nailed it. He's since done the promotional art for games such as Heartworm and Conscript, and I hope he continues doing what he does best. I'm not sure whether or not we will collaborate again in the future, but I'm sure whatever he touches will come out great.
Where did the idea for the area inside the moon come from? Was it inspired by Méliès, perhaps? And what about the other areas — like the suburban neighborhood, the laboratory, or the beach — what were your influences for those?
The moon was a part of the aforementioned last minute additions and, to be honest, I have no idea where it came from. At some point I grabbed a surface scan photo of the moon and modeled some terrain out of it, and then I decided to flip it. The neighborhood was inspired generally by my feelings of malaise living in a middle class suburb, and it was also pretty directly inspired by a similar area in the game Anodyne. Every other area came from my general interests and waking dreams of the time without much in the way of direct inspiration.
Would you say the game is without a moral?
Paradoxically, I'd say that the main criticism I have of the game is that it's a bit too didactic, but I also think that it doesn't center around any particular moral.
Do you follow a particular spiritual path or personal philosophy?
I guess I generally just believe that it is important for people to realize that nothing has inherent meaning, but that doesn't mean we live without meaning. We create meaning, we live meaningful lives, and we don't need a higher power or magical thought to do it. We are all going to stop existing eventually, but that doesn't make today any less of what it is.
How would you describe the atmosphere of Fatum Betula?
Dissociative, cozy, and unnerving.
Is there a single ending cutscene, or do the different endings each have their own? Is there a final moral or message to take away?
Each ending has its own cutscene representing what the world becomes after your actions. I would like to think the game reflects my emotions, thoughts, and feelings of the time rather than having a specific lesson to impart on you. It is what I was.
Credits:
Writing: Dreamers Intl (@radikaldreamers) & Clarisse Prévost (@redkoffee_)
Guest: Bryce Bucher