Quick look at the game
This week, I played Babbdi by Lamaitre Bros. It was a short but such an eerie game to play. The aesthetics, with the soul chilling sounds, the long dark hallways and towering gray, seemingly abandoned buildings, as well as the zombie-like characters all combine to create a sense of loneliness and looming danger. The player is prompted to want to escape by design.
This was my first time properly playing a walking game of this kind. I liked that the game included objectives that encourage the player to keep exploring the game. It was easy to see when resources can be interacted with and the hints for the commands to pick something up or use it were great.
How the story is told
Walking through the game shows you the scale of the impact of whatever happened in Babbdi. The act of walking achieves two main things in the game. 1- sets the objective and lets you know that this is a place that you would want to leave, and 2- lets you discover how you can go about leaving. It does this through, 1- the characters you meet and 2- your surroundings, i.e the architecture you observe and atmosphere you experience.
Through characters:
As you walk through the game, the characters along the way fill in the information about what’s happened. You don’t know where you are or what happened to the town from the get go. You have to solve the mystery of that and how to leave from the different clues various characters give you. These are given through snippets of stories of Babbdi residents.
I liked the stories made the stakes of being in Babbdi heavier like the sick wife, or the person dancing to music they used to listen to as a child. There’s elements of imminent danger and nostalgia mixed in. However, I feel that that could be pushed a bit more or there could be more signs of what the town used to be. The depth of the characters is pretty shallow and I think this was because it’s meant to be a quick game. However, I think if they focused on fewer characters with more stories to tell, they could hook players more.
Furthermore, the characters tell you they want to leave and give you hints of how you can leave but they never offer to leave with you. This creates distance that lets you know everyone is on their own.
Through the architecture and atmosphere:
Although it feels like you can walk endlessly, the passages you go through are hallway after tunnel after hallway. The perimeter of the courtyards and the game itself tell you that you are in an enclosed space. The walls are gray and ever imposing even when you’re outside. This creates the sense that you are alone and small. You are on your own in a scary place that is cold and uninviting.
The echo of your footsteps and the wind howling send a chill down your spine. I had the game accidentally playing in the background for a bit and the effect just the audio had on me was wild.
Overall the game is truly immersive and deeply disturbing. Which I think is the whole point so they did that part right. However, I felt that there could be more to be fleshed out. For one, I felt that the characters could have more to say.
