Betrayer the Renaissance of Roanoke

Black and White

The first impact the game has on us is with its monochromatic (noir) graphics, with a tint of red color. Why would anyone choose these colors for a game, you might ask!? From a very early age, kids tend to get scared by black, white, and red colored items, this having a deep psychological effect since our brains associate them with danger. If you can’t take the pressure, you can always fiddle with the game settings until you get a balanced colored environment.

The User Interface (UI) is not as user-friendly as we would like and sometimes gets confusing to browse through, but it is fairly rich in options and, with a bit of time, easy to adapt to. But this is not a drawback, since you spend very little time accessing the inventory for helpful notes and organizing your gear.

Betrayer concentrates on every sound you make, thus offering a very advanced stealth mechanism. Having to crouch and move silently or to run only when the wind blows (through the vegetation so you don’t get spotted) are a few of the nice perks the stealth provides in this game.

Even though it is daylight, the horror moments are always tense through growling, whispering, and creepy music, which keep you alert and make you feel unsafe anywhere you go to explore.

What Now?

As you may have noticed, you are all alone and have to make your way to the colonies to find out what happened there. The trail that you explore will offer clues, but the game itself won’t give you any quests or markers indicating where to go. This is a clever development, as you have to do everything on your own, based on your judgment and by putting together the clues and notes your acquire.

To make the action even more controverted, while exploring the open-ish world, you will have to take care of crazy Spaniards, who seem possessed by some sort of dark force which makes them attack anyone they see. The AI combat is diverse and sometimes overpowered–that is if you are not agile enough to avoid their shots. Best approach to get rid of them is to stealth very near, taking advantage of the environment, and head-shot them with one of your atypical weapons.

Betrayer has an arsenal of weapons that take a long time to shoot at your opponents. If you miss your target this becomes troublesome, as you turn from hunter to hunted very easily. Ammunition is plentiful and you can buy new weapons and upgrades at shops spread around the map. One of the more unusual weapons that you will have to rely on will be the bow as this versatile weapon is easy to shot and has little reload time.

To make matter worse, you will have to travel between worlds. What seems a bizarre reality is nothing compared with the noir undead land, inhabited by unrested Indian spirits, which you’ll have to traverse to reach unseen places that will help you solve confusing puzzles.

If you manage to die, you will drop most of your belongings on the ground, making you go back (to the X marked on the map) and retrieve them. If you manage to die a second time while you are going to the designated place, you will lose those items for good. This effect makes players choose carefully what attack strategy they will apply, as you can’t berserk into a number of foes and hope to get out alive and unscathed.

The Dark World

As you progress along the plot, it becomes very clear that Betrayer is a focused reference to the Roanoke Colonists event. It is a clever story with a static yet very vivid, creepy atmosphere, which twists our imagination and encourages us to explore the unknown.

Betrayer is one of the best indie RPG game of the year, which places you in a scary atmospheric world filled with morbidity and paradoxes. The stealth and combat mechanics are refined to the point where you have to think twice if you want to engage or avoid bloody encounters.

Noir environments suppress your fear emotions deeply, as the stunning graphics are the masterpiece of this game. So gather you strength and courage to start your own adventure to discover what really happened in 1604 to the first colony in the New World.