One of the fun things about the start of a new year is being able to hear everyone’s lists and rankings of their favourite things from the year past and to look out for yourself the things that sound interesting that either you didn’t have time for or weren’t even aware of.
Babbdi is one of those, as I was reading this article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun after already taking some notes of shorter indie titles I may have missed.
Funnily this game wouldn’t fall into my personal “qualifications” as a 2023 game due to it coming out a little more than a week before 2022 ended.
The top line on why you should also check this game out is that it is very short, easily completed in less than an hour and around two if you’re exploring a lot.
Also it is free and the system requirements are quite minimal so it isn’t going to be taxing for your pocket or your computer.
So, what the hell is Babbdi and why such a long introduction? Well, Babbdi is a game where you simply wander around a brutalist location, with twisted looking characters, trying out items one at a time on the simple quest of leaving this walled city.
The characters don’t have much to say, usually just speaking about what they are doing or hinting you towards your exit. Occasionally you’ll have small achievements to get via the denizens of this quite creepy place.
Items you find range from giving you different movement effects, to flashlights and other gadgets to help you search for secrets.
You can only hold one item at a time which on one hand can lead to further experimentation and saves you from getting confused with potential combinations or and inventory.
On the other hand the issue can become you don’t want to be rid of your favourite toy or perhaps you’ve found something that an item you had once before could help but you have no memory or guide to show you where you left it.
The game in its presentation and mechanics are in the politest way, janky.
This is clearly not by accident and the strangeness of the world and everything within creates a lot of intrigue that makes wandering around with what could be perceived as little to do quite fun.
An example item you get right at the start is a baseball bat, in any other game it would simply be for swinging at a ball or people’s heads. In Babbdi it can break some barriers but is actually used in what can be fairly described as a rocket jump.
This furthers adds to the strangeness and intrigue and gives the game huge potential to attempt to break it.
This however is a bit of a “Monkey’s Paw”.
By looking, sounding and feeling janky on purpose to create a feeling you unfortunately create potential barriers but worse within the jankiness can cause a bad time to be had in the game.
More than once I got my character completely stuck, there is only an autosave but I was lucky in closing down the game and returning freed my character of their trap.
More than once my searching for secrets would take me so far out to see absolutely nothing that I had no choice but to slowly go back (opening my phone in the other hand) and waste minutes doing absolutely nothing.
On one of these occasions I managed to get out of bounds, it is difficult to know where you are meant to be able to go when there are so many ways of breaking the traversal and in the case I could even get to a ship which had paintings on it, something that had to be placed by the devs, however trying to return was not only extremely slow but presented me with invisible walls that I had somehow passed through and needed to break back to get into the world or just delete all my progress and start again which sadly, did happen.
Now a game like this losing your progress may not be as bad as an RPG file becoming corrupted, as I stated at the start the game is very short. Still this was over an hour of progress and within the games restarted got rid of all my achievements (something it thankfully doesn’t do if you start another run on completion).
Being short Babbdi has instant replay value just out of curiosity but the game is designed to reward you, if in the most basic way, by giving you achievements and a list to check off that includes speaking to all the characters or even finishing the game within 4 minutes.
I may go back to doing these things as though my time with Babbdi wasn’t the greatest due to some technical problems, and the world feels repressive. It also was kind of fun and, the word I will use again - intriguing.
In a way I am confused as to why this game made the list of the article, I mentioned but, in another way, I can see how, with the right person, this can really dig its claws in and leave a lasting impression.
Babbdi is one of those, as I was reading this article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun after already taking some notes of shorter indie titles I may have missed.
Funnily this game wouldn’t fall into my personal “qualifications” as a 2023 game due to it coming out a little more than a week before 2022 ended.
The top line on why you should also check this game out is that it is very short, easily completed in less than an hour and around two if you’re exploring a lot.
Also it is free and the system requirements are quite minimal so it isn’t going to be taxing for your pocket or your computer.
So, what the hell is Babbdi and why such a long introduction? Well, Babbdi is a game where you simply wander around a brutalist location, with twisted looking characters, trying out items one at a time on the simple quest of leaving this walled city.
The characters don’t have much to say, usually just speaking about what they are doing or hinting you towards your exit. Occasionally you’ll have small achievements to get via the denizens of this quite creepy place.
Items you find range from giving you different movement effects, to flashlights and other gadgets to help you search for secrets.
You can only hold one item at a time which on one hand can lead to further experimentation and saves you from getting confused with potential combinations or and inventory.
On the other hand the issue can become you don’t want to be rid of your favourite toy or perhaps you’ve found something that an item you had once before could help but you have no memory or guide to show you where you left it.
The game in its presentation and mechanics are in the politest way, janky.
This is clearly not by accident and the strangeness of the world and everything within creates a lot of intrigue that makes wandering around with what could be perceived as little to do quite fun.
An example item you get right at the start is a baseball bat, in any other game it would simply be for swinging at a ball or people’s heads. In Babbdi it can break some barriers but is actually used in what can be fairly described as a rocket jump.
This furthers adds to the strangeness and intrigue and gives the game huge potential to attempt to break it.
This however is a bit of a “Monkey’s Paw”.
By looking, sounding and feeling janky on purpose to create a feeling you unfortunately create potential barriers but worse within the jankiness can cause a bad time to be had in the game.
More than once I got my character completely stuck, there is only an autosave but I was lucky in closing down the game and returning freed my character of their trap.
More than once my searching for secrets would take me so far out to see absolutely nothing that I had no choice but to slowly go back (opening my phone in the other hand) and waste minutes doing absolutely nothing.
On one of these occasions I managed to get out of bounds, it is difficult to know where you are meant to be able to go when there are so many ways of breaking the traversal and in the case I could even get to a ship which had paintings on it, something that had to be placed by the devs, however trying to return was not only extremely slow but presented me with invisible walls that I had somehow passed through and needed to break back to get into the world or just delete all my progress and start again which sadly, did happen.
Now a game like this losing your progress may not be as bad as an RPG file becoming corrupted, as I stated at the start the game is very short. Still this was over an hour of progress and within the games restarted got rid of all my achievements (something it thankfully doesn’t do if you start another run on completion).
Being short Babbdi has instant replay value just out of curiosity but the game is designed to reward you, if in the most basic way, by giving you achievements and a list to check off that includes speaking to all the characters or even finishing the game within 4 minutes.
I may go back to doing these things as though my time with Babbdi wasn’t the greatest due to some technical problems, and the world feels repressive. It also was kind of fun and, the word I will use again - intriguing.
In a way I am confused as to why this game made the list of the article, I mentioned but, in another way, I can see how, with the right person, this can really dig its claws in and leave a lasting impression.