The game I played was BABBDI and it was created by Sirius and Léonard Lemaitre. The target audience of the game is older teenagers and mature audiences, not because of explicit violence but just the general dark and potentially disturbing visuals of the game. I would say the target audience also includes beginner gamers since the controls are pretty simple and easy to learn. I think this game mainly targets English speakers/readers but non-English speakers/readers can enjoy this game through the visuals and roaming around. The game supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS and can be downloaded through Steam.
BABBDI shows that walking tells a story not only through inciting different emotions throughout the embedded narrative but also supporting different motivations through emergent narratives.
[Light green outside contrasts to dark inside]
The subtle pieces in the design of BABBDI bring up different emotions throughout the game, intentionally sparking curiosity in the player to learn more about the narrative. BABBDI offers no exposition in the beginning of the game, unlike some games that play a short video clip to explain the background of the story. Instead, BABBDI gives the player full independence in the exploration process, simply dropping them into the world and allowing them to move around. The game subtly encourages the player to talk to other characters by placing a character directly in the original line of sight, but the player is not forced to talk to this character. This demonstrates the embedded narrative in the mechanic of conversing with other characters voluntarily. The player must talk to other characters to collect clues about the game’s primary quest, but the player also has the option of just walking around the world’s space. Thus, walking tells the story through the environment in BABBDI rather than through explicit words. Without knowing the goal of the game (to escape BABBDI), the player is able to learn the story of the space through the visuals. By choosing a majority of indoor spaces to contain a smoky, gray atmosphere, the designer evokes a somber, dreary mood in the player. However, the tone of the world shifts as the designer also chose a brighter, slightly warmer light to fill outdoor spaces. Even if the player did not talk to any other character, the player knows that the indoor spaces are probably bad and the goal of the game would be to retreat to a brighter area, cluing them into the goal of escape. The mechanic of freedom creates an abnegation and discovery type of fun, as it gives players the agency to get lost in the world and slowly learn the gamespace.
Furthermore, I think BABBDI additionally supports emergent narratives through giving multiple ways to play the game. An emergent narrative that I saw was collecting objects centered loosely around the theme of an abandoned area but not specifically tied to a linear narrative. I think this act of collection was sort of like a puzzle without a clear plot and separate from the narrative of “escaping BABBDI”. Therefore, maybe walking allows the designer to incorporate multiple different narratives and adds to the replayability.
I think violence in other games tap into the fantasy type of fun and allow users to act in outrageous ways that would only exist in the game world/by bringing them into the magic circle. However, BABBDI does not lean heavily into this type of fun so it avoids a lot of the ethical concerns around violence, such as concerns that shooting games may allow players to practice real violence in the real world. I think it changes the tone of the story and taps into a different kind of fear, one that is subtle rather than jump scare-like. It also sets the pacing of the story to be slower and less fast-paced like the nature of shooter games.
Despite the lack of explicit violence in BABBDI, there was creepy imagery that could be potentially disturbing to players. I wonder if it is the role of the designer to communicate the violence level of the game through the design of the cover, which would be the first impression of a game on a potential player. I think BABBDI does not communicate the visuals of the game simply through the cover, which is a critique I have of the game. I would compare this to an explicitly violence game such as Bulletstorm, in which the cover displays the graphic violence that the game includes so audiences who are avoiding this can choose not to play it.
