Previous Next

Many centuries ago, when the knights were long and the ladies were waiting, people couldn't get enough of fratricide. This is the edieval era of Betrayal - set in a place known as the West Marches. It is here where four ruthless princes fight to gain control of their father's kingdom.

As one of the four brothers, you have one aim - to rid the kingdom of your troublesome siblings and eventually overthrow both the Bishop and the King, your father.

Because you are a prince, you have certain assets at your command. When you start the game, you already own various villages in the West Marches. In these villages are three types of subjects of varying loyalty - craftsmen, farmers and militia. Craftsmen are necessary to produce artefacts you can then trade to provide wealth for the villagers. Farmers grow crops you can sell of use to feed the townspeople. The militia prevent rogue lords overthrowing your hold on the village. How well each group do their job can impove your chances of becoming King.

You can harvest each village annually, or once every twelve game-turns. Each game-turn is divided into six moon-phases in which you can do several jobs - harvesting and so on. If you're successful, you have money left over from the harvest to pay taxes. And they're important.

In order to become King, you need to have friends at Court. You always start off with a certain number of courtiers who reside with the King and the Bishop. Before you can depose these two, you need a majority of courtiers in at least one Court. Unfortunately, both the King and the Bishop demand payment of one tax unit per courtier loses his head.

There are plenty of other ways of making more appropriate friends - espionage and assassination are the quickest ways, but they are very risky. Still, not only can your enemy find evidence against you, you can also find evidence against an opponent or force the King to denounce the perpetrator. Everyone, including your brothers, can indulge in underhand tactics so there are plenty of opportunities for backstabbing!

In this way, you gradually gain control of the two Courts. Even so, you get problems at home - troublesome aristocracy, invasions by your opponents, crop failure and peasant revolt. You can be a tyrant if you want and suppress uprisings but nothing guarantees you success.

Betrayal is primarily a strategy game, and as such, it's a good one. Information is clearly presented on screen, and the progression of the game is easy to follow. Even so,the little animation added to the game does nothing to enhance it. Graphics are poor, and most of the figures look grotesquely out of proportion. Musically, there's little on offer. A twee, clip-based warble introduces the game, and there are a few whinnying horse effects and clashing sounds for the fight sequences.

As a concept, Betrayalis fine, but it is let down by poor execution. With such tacky screens, you tend not to take the plots to heart - if your imagination were truly simulated, this wouldn't arise.

Betrayal is difficult to play at first, especially against three ST-controlled adversaries. It's more fun with a group of human players, but then the continuity of the game breaks down because you have to take it in turns to play. Betrayal would make a great board game, but sadly it isn't as strong on the ST.