Produced by indie videogame developer Rottentater
, Fetus is a puzzle game with an unsettling atmosphere and an interesting mechanic: the levels wrap around themselves, allowing to fall through a hole and reappearing at the top of the screen. Oh, and your enemy is, obviously, a Fetus Terrible.
The protagonist, Aramas, seeks revenge on Fetus. However, since Fetus can only be killed by the undead, Aramas builds a time machine to send himself back once he dies. The result is various alternate selves wandering around. You play as an Aramas before he conceived of the machine, and must navigate him through the Abyss.
suteF, the remake-slash-sequel, expands the abilities of the player character: he can also jump, grab ledges, and throw a grappling hook to reach further places, or pull crates towards himself. Accordingly, levels are more varied and complex. Get it here.
Tropes applying to suteF:
- All There in the Manual: The background of the story is mostly explained on the site.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: The names of the chapters are in alphabetical order. Awake, Beginning, Captivity, Duffle, the
missing chapter Escape, and Fetus. - Alternate Self: You encounter many throughout the game as a result of the original Aramas’s time traveling.
- Antagonist Title
- Big Bad: Fetus.
- Blood from the Mouth: Aramas suffers this a few times.
- Book Ends: The first and last levels are identical. Aramas awakens, coughs up blood, and the objective is to reach the screen to the right.
- Bottomless Pits: With the Wrap Around mechanic, you reappear at the top of the screen and continue falling until you restart the level (or when something changes.)
- Camera Abuse: Everytime you change levels, the screen fills with static. Fitting, since you have to reach a giant TV screen filled with static to do that. Subverted when you don't use the screens; for example, a white flash when the level becomes snowy, and a red one when you access the Void Rims.
- Crate Expectations
- Driven to Suicide: You see a few Aramases doing this, after holding their head in panic.
- Eldritch Location: The entire game is played in different parts of the "Abyss": a normal part of it, the external limit of the Abyss (Abyssal Shell), its center (Playland), a zone between the Abyss and Reality (Chaos), somewhere outside both of them (Void), and the border of Chaos (The Edge).
- Endless Corridor: During chapter C, you have a broken leg. You begin to bleed out while walking down the corridor.
- Eye Scream: How Bob kills Fetus.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Orbis/Catfish, from the original game and Chapter A in the sequel. Its background is explained in the site.
- Gravity Screw: Some pads reverse gravity for whatever steps on them, be it crates or yourself.
- Hannibal Lecture
- Hope Spot: At least twice.
- Mind Screw: Word of God is that the game was deliberately made to make a “minimal amount of sense.”
- Missing Episode: Chapter E. Each chapter has a name started with the same name as the Chapter, so what's Chapter E's? Escape.
- One-Winged Angel: Fetus cannot be killed by the living, and injuring him just makes him grow stronger each time.
- Secret Level: Void Rims. You need to reach spots out of the normal path to access them. All of them are hard to complete.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Chapter F after the elevator: Move left instead of right. The player enters an infinite loop, and cannot restart the map (or close the game without using an external utility.)
- Wrap Around: A key mechanic.
