The game I played for this critical play is called Babbdi, a 2022 PC adventure game developed by Sirius and Léonard Lemaitre and published by Lemaitre Bros that’s available on Steam. This game is intended for an audience that is 13+ years of age. This game was definitely an experience I have not had before. I don’t normally play games that are this mysterious, but I ended up enjoying this game a lot. There was no background to the story at all, so as I walked around the place and talked to people I tried to gather bits and pieces to understand where I was and how to proceed in the story. This game definitely relies a lot on exploration fun. I tend to be a player that would be a “killer” like talked about in class. I like to explore, however, as I explore I like to mess around and to do random things that do not really help me in the story. In these walking simulators, being a “killer” player tends to get boring because the game will remain in the same state if you do not start completing quests and putting things together. I felt like this was especially true in Babbdi where I could not really do much if I wasn’t paying attention to what the people in the game were telling me and using this information to make important moves in the game. However, my explorer side really enjoyed this game at least at the very start. The reason for such is because when I first started the game everything was so new and there was so much to see. Conversations with the people were confusing cause they did not say things that made the most sense most of the time. However, after a while I got kind of overwhelmed with how much there was still to see and I did not really remember where I had been and where I hadn’t and how to get to certain places. The world seemed so big that I actually gave up at one point and was like “how do I end my life in the game this is too much.” The ambiance was also pretty depressing and lonely, which seemed to be the point of the game; you’re supposed to feel lonely and hopeless.
As someone who is a “killer” in games, I found that the freedom to do whatever I want in this game made me a lot more violent than I normally am. However, I think this was also influenced by the objects that I was able to pickup in the game like a club and soccer ball. I was told by one of the first people I talked to in the game to use the club and hit things, so I would go around trying to hit random things and destroy stuff. This sort of ignited some sort of violent nature in me. I tried to use a soccer ball to hit some of the pigeons pictured above for no reason at all. This led me to question whether the nature of the game was making me more violent or if my “rule-breaker” nature was what was causing this. The game inherently is not intended to be violent. In fact, you cannot really kill or destroy anything. However, some of the objects led me to believe that I had to be doing things that were more violent than the game itself was. I would not call myself a naturally violent person, but there is some sort of catharsis experienced when a player has so much freedom to do whatever they want in a game where there is no one chasing them, no time limit, and no rules as to what you can or can’t do.
