BABBDI is a a short, first person exploration “walking sim” game created by Lemaitre Bros that is free to play on Steam. The game challenges players to walk through a forsaken district in the outer ring of the megalopolis BABBDI and escape. Players “win” against the game by being able to escape. As the player walks, the game evokes “sense pleasure” and the narrative unfolds, but this is initially disorienting to the player.
BABBDI creates an aesthetic of “sense pleasure” because of the dynamics of exploring one’s surroundings and the mechanics of having to use controls for walking, looking, and interacting with objects. Throughout the game, sensation is created through manipulation of sight, sound and pace of the game. One particular moment of success for this is the sound that the game creates when a player walks or jumps. For example, I fell from a tall tower and instead of dying, I heard the “whoosh” of a deep fall which evoked my senses.
Although BABBDI attempts to create “narrative” fun because players learn more about their objective as they go, I was unable to experience this immediately. One of the reasons why narrative fun was hard to achieve initially is because the boundaries of the game were not clear. A moment of fail for me during the game was spending 5 minutes walking down a dark hallway with no end in sight. Because the game didn’t warn me to avoid going down dark hallways, I was extremely confused navigating down this hallway and had to backtrack when I realized I hadn’t made any progress.
Another reason the “narrative” fun wasn’t quite achieved with the game was lack of clarity when encountering people to “talk” with. Although the talking revealed to me that I needed to escape and I was looking for train tickets, the game lacked resources to act upon the information that a figure in the game would reveal to me. Because my main action/resource was to walk, I’d forget what the figure would tell me or not consider the information that significantly.
However, one way that narrative was successfully revealed to me was through the collection of objects and the different achievements that I unlocked. These subgoals helped me toward my overall objective and created some structure to my exploration.
In BABBDI, walking tells a story because the narrative reveals itself as the player keeps walking, the player interacts with different objects and people in the environment which evokes sense pleasure, and players unlock achievements that help them reach their ultimate objective. To improve the game, I would delineate clear boundaries for the player (give them hints if they are extremely off-base in their exploration), and provide certain resources for them to act on new information immediately so that the exploration has gratification. As a first-time walking sim experience, BABBDI delivered on “sense pleasure” the most.
