BABBDI, created by Sirius Lemaitre, Léonard Lemaitre, is an exploration game from the first-person perspective, where the player finds themselves in the district of Babbdi alone and needs to figure out what has happened in order to escape. It is a video game on Steam and designed for players above 16 years old.
I argue that as a walking simulator game, BABBDI tells the story partly through creating a depressing ambience with music and graphics, partly through allowing the player to explore the complex environment and figure out the backstory with hardly any constraint. By giving players the freedom to set and pursue their own objectives in the game world, the success of BABBDI is grounded on player’s autonomy and sustained through the excitement of Challenge and Discovery. Throughout the game, the player satisfies their need of sensual stimulation, information (through exploring and seeking information about the city), and achievement (through accomplishing different side quests).
Even before learning any substantial information, the player has already been brought into the story world through the unsettling ambience created by the visual graphics and the sound effects in the game. Despite being pixelated and not super elaborate, the dimly-lit hallway and the dark gray forsaken complex outside bring about a desolate and depressing sensation. As the player starts to explore the place, they will encounter and have to interact with inhabitants of the district. These NPCs are designed to look scary with pale faces and hollow eyes, some lying in the waterlike a decayed corpse. The game also enriches the player’s sensual experience with sound effects of the player’s own footsteps echoing in the space, or music intended to create a creepy atmosphere. Despite knowing it’s not a combat game, all these mechanics still create an immersive environment that instantly pulled me into the game world and made me uneasy when I first started playing. BABBDI successfully exemplifies how space games with elements of fantasy can make use of sensory tools to create an engaging environment for the narrative. However, after getting used to the environment and seeing the NPCs, which are designed to look very similar in the face, the scariness starts to fade away. I would suggest BABBDI to have more varied designs to keep the player sensually engaged throughout the game.
In the game, the story is told not only through the player’s self-exploration of the district, but also through talking with the NPCs. The player starts off in the game not knowing where they are, why they are here, and what they are supposed to do at this place. It is through wandering around that they start to acquire information about the configuration of the game world, the whereabouts of the building, the dam, the field, the train station, etc. They would start to come up with guesses regarding why the district looks so desolate and forsaken. The NPCs play an important role in revealing bits and pieces of the narrative. Through talking to an NPC that says he tries to get train tickets so that his sick wife could leave Babbdi, I learnt that I need to figure out how to get train tickets in order to escape from the city. This made me more attentive to any evidence related to the train station in my following exploration. Although the game never explicitly directs me to do or not do anything, it scatters resources for piecing together a narrative throughout the game world. Through the process of discovering these pieces of evidence, I was able to piece the puzzle together to see a more complete picture. With the intention of looking for ways to escape the city, I was a bit disappointed by the fact that many NPCs I talked to did not provide any useful information that would help with the task of escaping the city, but merely help to enrich the narrative of the game world. For example, an old lady holding groceries says something like “one step at a time, I will get back home”. A man behind the door says, “get out of my sight”. There were only a few NPCs providing information that helps with my main taskline. It would be better if the main taskline is more intricate and the game has more NPCs that provide information about the main taskline.
Although the main taskline is relatively simple, I think some might see it as a merit of BABBDI: It is exactly because of its expansive spatial settings and not heavily emphasized main taskline that gives players freedom for setting their own objectives in the game. Some players may challenge themselves with getting out of the city as fast as possible; others take their time to look for the 21 secret objects; still others just want to discover interesting scenes or hear the stories of different NPCs. The game has in store rich resources (NPCs, the city, special movement abilities, secret collectible objects, etc.) to accommodate all these objectives and has a variety of side quests that the player can challenge themselves with apartfrom escaping from the city. Although the game ending condition is to get on the train and leave the city, it is not emphasized as being more important than the other tasks. So it really respects the autonomy of players by giving them freedom to do whatever they like.
