Betrayer: stylish FPS from former F.E.A.R. developers announced

Betrayer is the debut project from the former Monolith developers behind F.E.A.R. and No One Lives Forever that make up Blackpowder Games. It's a noir-esque FPS set in a monochromatic depiction of colonial Virginia.

PC Gamer has the game's debut trailer here, and you may agree that the visual style smacks of Platinum Games' Wii brawler Madworld.

It's an FPS set in 1604 and based within an American wilderness teeming with undead soldiers who have emerged from a mysterious British encampment. Players can piece together the plot by searching for artefacts scattered across the black and white world, while objects of interest are highlighted in red to create a striking visual style.

The game's gunplay component sees players wielding muskets, crossbows and throwing axes as they journey across the uncharted wilds of the New World.

Speaking with the site about the game's colonial setting, creative lead Craig Hubbard said, "The social situation of that time was really interesting, I don’t know if you’ve read about what it was like to be in the Pilgrim colonies, like if you broke the law, but they’d like… pile stones on you until you died. It was just brutal and horrific and that’s great subject matter for an atmospheric and eerie game.”

On the visual style, CEO and UI designer Larry Paolicelli added, “When we turned it off and when we went back to color, we missed the tension. We missed being in that world. We’d do playtesting, and we’d show people both, and they liked the black and white better, because of that tension, because of that sense of mystery."

The game will indeed be tense, because when you die your loot stays on your corpse and must be retrieved once you respawn. The game's handling was also likening to Far Cry 3, and the campaign was confirmed to be around the five-hour mark.

Do you think the game looks mysterious so far? You can check out the Blackpowder Games site for more information, and the game itself will hit Steam Early Access on August 14 at $15.

Thanks GAF.