Bem Feito is a seemingly innocent farming game that houses disturbing content, supernatural conspiracies, and creepypasta-inspired horror.
The game takes place entirely inside of the Garotron OS, which is used to run the JoGaroto emulator that contains the actual Bem Feito ROM.
Bem Feito features a gameboy-esque black and white aesthetic, where the player is put in the shoes of the smiling main character Reginaldo, as he goes through his daily duties of tending to his farm.
Bem Feito
Developer: oiCabie
Publisher: QUByte Interactive
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: November 9, 2023
Players: 1
Price: $14.99
The game starts off innocently enough, but after the first day Reginaldo’s duties also include killing anyone who shows up at his farm, usually in some extra cruel way pertaining to what anthropomorphic object his visitor looks like.
Reginaldo is your typical hidden horror character, who starts off looking innocent at first, but gets corrupted over time depending on your choices. We also get the usual bleeding from the eyes zoom-in shot of him every once in a while, which clearly shows the classic creepypasta inspiration that the game draws from.
The black and white aesthetic present throughout the in-game ROM also greatly enhances the atrocities that Reginaldo commits, as the permanent crimson stains found around his house serve as a grim reminder of his murders.
Bem Feito doesn’t shy away from Brazilian wordplay and references, like JoGaroto, serving is an intentionally awkward adaptation of GameBoy. What doesn’t seem to be intentionally awkward is the game’s English localization, which doesn’t manage to keep up with the game’s clever writing and ends up dropping quite a bit of its charm along the way.
Some deeper cuts, like the anecdote about a dagger inside of the AmiGo toy may also be completely lost to any non-Brazilians, as it’s a reference to a 90’s doll that used a stake to hold its heavy head in place. Said stake looked awfully similar to a dagger, which ended up spawning an urban legend. The likelihood of anyone outside of Brazil understanding this reference is very slim.
I wouldn’t say the game is unplayable for English speakers, as it does feature full localization, but some of its writing may go over your head. Awkward phrasing and spelling mistakes here and there can also take away from the experience.
Bem Feito clocks in at roughly one hour and a half when doing both endings, and most of its substance comes from the documents that players slowly unlock while progressing through the in-universe ROM.
The actual game portion of Bem Feito is extremely drawn-out by long animations and boring tasks, which seemingly only serve to pad out its already short runtime.
Considering how little there is when it comes to content it becomes difficult to even properly discuss the game, as going in-depth would give away a good chunk of its story. Below you’ll find some light spoilers pertaining to the game’s plot.
The game hints at a pretty interesting mystery, pertaining to this company that showed up out of nowhere with the revolutionary JoGaroto console, claiming it to be powered without the use of batteries.
It turns out that holding the console for even a small period of time would lead to exhaustion, implying that it was powered by “draining” something out of its players.
Bem Feito was also one of the top selling games of 1999 in-universe, but somehow only a handful of people in the dark web even remember its existence. Pictures of the console and cartridge are extremely scarce, with most of them being glitchy and surrounded by supernatural events.
After finishing the game, we get the usual “you shouldn’t have killed them” speech from Reginaldo, criticizing you for following orders and doing exactly what you need to progress, as I don’t think the files unlock without killing Reginaldo’s friends.
If there was a spectrum between Spec Ops: The Line and Undertale, Bem Feito would probably fall right in the middle. The game does give you the choice of not killing anyone, unlike Spec Ops, but at the same time the characters are so one-dimensional that you really don’t care about killing them, unlike Undertale.
I’d say that Bem Feito‘s extremely short runtime is its most tragic aspect, as it manages to hook the player but chooses to let go instead of building up to something bigger.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but Bem Feito is nowhere near as meta or interesting as it may initially seem, falling short of other similar titles like Pony Island or Simulacra.
Players who explore the in-game OS can find the ARG portion of the game, which is hosted entirely on a website outside of the program. The ARG part of Bem Feito feels pretty half-hearted, almost like it’s present simply to tick a box so the game can claim to be an ARG. I have no issues with the puzzles being simple to solve, as what bothers me is the lack of substance.
The underutilization of the OS concept also really disappoints me. Not much is done with it aside from players receiving an angry e-mail from Reginaldo and being able to reset the game by deleting the Bem Feito ROM. It’s honestly disheartening to see the OS never be used as a vehicle for horror or a massive fourth wall break aside from these two moments at the end of the game.
Overall, Bem Feito would be a really good first chapter of a game. It’s easy to get hooked by its mysteries at first, as you keep wanting to see what else there is, but the fact that there’s nothing else afterwards is pretty disappointing.
There was clearly a lot of effort put into the game’s assets, both the ones made for the OS and the ones made for the in-universe ROM, but it largely feels like an underdeveloped premise due to its short runtime.
Bem Feito was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by QUByte Interactive. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Bem Feito is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
