The name of the game I played is Babbdi. The target audience is a wide range of people, although most likely not children because the game has some graphic elements in it such as depictions of dead bodies. The game’s creators are Sirius and Léonard Lemaitre. The platform of the game is Steam.
The story is driven by the player’s walking in that the only way for the player to learn more about the world is through walking. The point of the game is for the player to explore the abandoned structure of Babbdi, and try to find a way to escape through train tickets. Along the way, the player will meet and interact with the people of Babbdi as well as pick up objects such as a pickaxe. The only way to do either of these things is through walking. If the game started at the beginning and the player of the game did not start walking, they would not experience any of the story aside from the information given by their immediate surroundings. They would not even know the goal of the game is to escape Babbdi, which is an instrumental aspect of the story. It follows that without walking, the player can not consume a meaningful enough amount of information about the game’s story. Thus, without walking, there is no story.
In Game Design as Narrative Architecture, Jenkins writes that game designers “don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces.” This shows that there is an important link between a walking simulator’s such as Babbdi’s story and the world the story takes place in, given that we just showed that without walking, there is no story in Babbdi. Jenkins goes on to reference how games follow in the footsteps of spatial stories such as the classical myths and odysseys that writers like Tolkien and Verne referenced as well. These stories are driven by travel as well: Odysseus’s story took root in his travels, The Hobbit’s story could not have happened without Bilbo walking. Babbdi builds on this tradition of spatial stories as well.
Although Babbdi did not involve extreme violence and I as the player did not have to engage in violence, there was an inherent thread of violence snaking its way throughout. First, the concept of potentially not being able to escape Babbdi was tinged with violence, as one could see the consequence of not escaping was eventual death due to an insufficiency of resources. Second, the possibility of violence, although sometimes unconfirmed, arises at various intervals; for example, the player may stumble upon a dead body floating in water that surrounds a few graves. Ultimately, the implication of violence in Babbdi heightens the urgency of the game, and may even encourage the player to wonder about the negative impacts humanity has had on the environment and on other humans, and ask more questions about who experiences harm and why in the society we live in. The constant shadow of violence is disconcerting in a way that sharpens the viewer’s focus onto present-day disparities and human impact.
