The game I played this week is called Babbdi. It is a short, first person exploration experience where the playable character is looking for a way to escape the “forsaken district” Babbdi. This game was developed by Sirius Lemaitre and Léonard Lemaitre, and published on Steam by Lemaitre Bros on December 22nd, 2022. It is playable on MacOS, Windows, and SteamOS.
Babbdi uses the city to tell a story by placing things in specific areas, enabling the player to use light and walkability to thoroughly explore the world in a human-like form. This was a really fun and engaging game to play, despite it being a bit weird (by weird I mean the sounds, the way things looked, and the things people were doing). I found the game movement, lighting, and overall accessibility to be the largest components of the overall playability and narrative building.
For example, I found it really interesting how the developers used lighting to direct players to engage with specific areas. This world isn’t necessarily bright, so there are a lot of dark spaces that guide you away from them. Within these dark spaces, there’s often some sort of light that is strategically placed at some distance in order to provide a silent cue for you to go there. And when you enter these or engage with these areas of light, there’s usually a door, an item, or some person you can interact with. This is super helpful with helping push the story forward.
Going to the movement, the player can move with human-like movements. This includes running, jumping, driving, swinging, the arm, etc. And this makes it feel like a human is traversing through this unique world, right? And something that I found super interesting is that when you drive a motorcycle in the game, you could also add specific human movements within driving a motorcycle that isn’t necessarily realistic, like jumping, climbing up stairs, things of that nature, riding in an elevator, things that you do not typically or commonly use in motorcycle in, you could produce human-like movements within the motorcycle. From a developer perspective, I think this helps the user feel like they’re engaging with a more realistic game and can put themselves in the shoes of the player they’re playing as. Furthermore, this increases the convenience of play, right? By being able to jump with a motorcycle, you’re able to traverse the world much faster than you would on foot.
Tying back to accessibility, the motorcycle is super helpful in accessing inaccessible areas at a timely matter. But also looking at the terrain itself, there’s this mix of realistic and kind of fake looking architecture. Looking back on some concepts we covered in class, the developers definitely used environmental cues to tell the story. On the realistic side, there are all the functions of a society. Canal, Bathroom, Stairs, buildings, etc. And the fake part of this world is the use of weird pillars or freestanding structures and beams that create an abandoned slash brutalist architecture vibe that you probably won’t see in a regular society, but you might see in an abandoned society, which I believe is what this game is looking to emulate.
I didn’t feel that this game had a lot of direct violence. Yes it was unsettling and there were some violent features like weapons and breaking into secures places, but that is the extent of violence I experienced when playing this game. I think the overall setting of the game shows the aftermath of what looks to be violence, and the disturbing vibe coupled with disheveled looking people tells a narrative of destitute and tragedy. I believe this game design was intentional by the developers,
- See how the room is very dark, and the BRIGHT RED light on top of the persons head is essentially telling you walk there. The bright white lights on the roof illuminate the path there.
- Notice how there is an illuminated hole in the wall. This is a clear message from the game to the player that they should go interact with that surface. The rest of the wall is a dark shadow, except for that hole. Also notice that the bridge to the left of the dark wall is slightly illuminated. If you look closely at the light you’ll see a humanoid figure sitting on the middle of the bridge. The slight light cast onto the human was intentional, and proposed an alternate path for the player to explore.
- This screenshot was taken when I entered a tunnel. I followed an illuminated path until I entered a dark corridor with a bright light in the distance. As I got closer I saw what looked to be people dancing around a trash can fire. I could hear the music from a distance, but the light from the fire (and the darkness that showed the lack of an alternate path in the tunnel) was the cue for me to engage with those people.
