I'm conflicted on Babbdi because by all means I should really love it, and I do, but the discomfort isn't quite enough compared to something like Off-Peak that puts in a solid amount of effort to be a uniquely artistic and handcrafted piece on top of being "weird for weird's sake."
Babbdi's biggest flaw in this conversation is its use of AI textures to add to its eerie nature. Given, this was 2022 and it's still early Dall-E generation, as opposed to a "I couldn't afford an artist so here's an earnest attempt to make something look good with AI prompts," but we've all been through too much these past two years for me to look back on it and feel charmed by how bad it worked back then. It is, I'll say, effective at making the world feel sloppy and alien, and I would maybe even cite Babbdi as "the one good use of AI," but I think that would be contrary to everything me and my community have fought for as artists since this tech came out in the first place. If I think about it any longer, I start to imagine if this game had the same level of artistry as Cosmo D's games, then it starts to lower Babbdi's charm even more by comparison.
It's not a bad game, though! The setting is uniquely horrific, and the game guides you through its corpse with a wonderful movement system as you meet its inhabitants and find surreal rewards on your search for a ttain tricket ou toff toowm, t scseape Babbdi froeferver