The plant is our fate, and its water our fuel.
Fatum Betula is an existential indie Adventure Game developed by Bryce Bucher. The game was released on June 20th, 2020.
In an unchanging world, you are tasked with watering an ancient birch tree with a liquid. It was never specified to have to be water, and the ending will change with what it is filled with. There are a total of 10 liquids that the player can find or create to change the future.
A demo of the game was featured on the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020, and the game was fully released on Steam
and Itch.io. It was later released on consoles.
This game provides examples of:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Giving the birch wine causes everyone in the world to be drunk and deciding to throw large parties, but the text implies they die because they are Too Dumb to Live.
- And I Must Scream: Overlapping with Who Wants to Live Forever?, the skeleton that the player finds in the autumn area has been rendered completely immobile and begging for death. Thankfully, the player is able to Mercy Kill him.
- Apocalypse How: A few of the endings result in the world ending. This ranges from Class 2 (every creature becomes more aggressive and murders each other) to full Class Z with the game world undergoing Cessation of Existence.
- Bittersweet Ending: Some of the endings where the world doesn't end has an Anti-Nihilist tone that the future cannot simply be created by what is fed into the plant, but that humankind has to create it themselves.
- Cessation of Existence: In the "Nothing to Worry About" ending, the game's universe and everything in it simply stops existing entirely, with the game itself calling the player out.
- Death Seeker: The immortal characters that the player comes across beg for either death or non-existence.
- Dem Bones:
- Feeding the birch with liquid bone results in everybody turning into a skeleton.
- One of the Haunted PS1 mascots, a purple skeleton named Skully, appears in an Easter Egg and promptly tells the player to "get the hell out".
- Downer Ending: Most of the results for feeding the plant liquid result in a bad future, if any future at all.
- First-Person Ghost: Played straight. The player cannot even see their hands when holding or using items, they just float in the air. Although one area has what might be you, and you are a white textureless body with a camera for a head.
- Forest of Perpetual Autumn: There exists a part of the world of different colored and falling leaves with a serene song on the soundtrack.
- Guide Dang It!: Some liquids and Easter Eggs are purely the result of RNG and may require multiple playthroughs of hoping to get them to spawn. There is also a secret liquid and "ending" that can only be accessed by modding the game values and manually adding it in on the PC version.
- Interface Screw: Sleeping in the cherry daydream area will have the player wake up with the colors and textures being distorted and overlapping with one another. There is an option in the settings to turn this effect down for those are epileptic-prone.
- Man-Eating Plant: Feeding the plant "plant growth" will result in it becoming this, wanting to be fed and continue to grow.
- Multiple Endings: The game has a total of 8 standard endings from feeding the plant various liquids, one Golden Ending, and a secret "ending" that the player has to mod a liquid into the game files for a video from the developer.
- Nightmare Face: The face of the wind, who gives you the vials, has bright orange eyes and a slit mouth that stretches vertically across his face.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The ghost that the player finds by the grave states that he wants to "poison the future" by enacting a Class Z Apocalypse. Given that he is bored with his own immortality, it can be somewhat justified.
- Retraux: The game's art style harkens to The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games, with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask specifically being listed as one of its biggest inspirations.
- Suburbia: Journeying through the ocean takes the player to one, filled only with a single housewife listening to Father Knows Best and your in-game avatar.
- Vicious Cycle: In one of the paths, you murder your in-game avatar and feed the birch your own blood. Given that the ending is titled "The Cycle", it is implied that you've just trapped yourself into one.
- Video Game Caring Potential: There is a raccoon who is starving. Feeding them will have them show their gratitude and reward you by giving you oil...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ... It is also possible for you to kill them, either by cutting them down with the knife or feeding them the poisonous fruit or fish.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: A major theme of the game is that achieving immortality is being Blessed with Suck. An immortal is stuck unable to move, a ghost is bored and wants to end his and everyone else's misery in fear of the plant, and giving the birch immortality liquid will result in everyone outliving the planet and float perpetually in space.
- You Bastard!: There are a few points that the game will call out the player themselves for the choices they make. This is most notable if they feed the birch poison, as the world undergoes a Class Z Apocalypse, with the ending narration mentioning that only the player remembers the world existing, but will too die one day.
