Babbdi
Release Date: December 22, 2022
Developer: Sirius Lemaitre, Leonard Lemaitre
Publisher: Lemaitre Bros
Price: FREE
my playtime: 1 hour
This free game left an impression upon me, and I don’t think I’m unique in my experience given the amount of dialogue online about this game. It’s a weird game of exploration not too dissimilar from Sludge Life. Except this oppressed community is not colorful or whimsical, for the most part. There is one warm room with colored shiny lights. Otherwise the air is heavy, the architecture brutalist, the people defeated, resigned to their fate in the drab dying city of Babbdi.
Your goal is to get a train ticket and leave. That’s all, and once you’ve played through you can easily beat subsequent sessions in under 5 or so minutes. Similar to Sludge Life the exploration is real entertainment. You have a fairly large map, massive concrete buildings and nothing is off limits. Every tool you pick up along the way is a fun addition and changes the way you explore. Likewise to Sludge Life each NPC has something unique to say, or at least a mood if they don’t feel like talking.
This game is liminal, giving the player an uncanny feeling. The massive, imposing structures with their almost but not quite recognizable words on signs, contrast with sparse population of deformed citizens. Another game I don’t plan to delete from my Steam Deck, an environment I would like to revisit, experience, exist in for a little while.
9/10
CM 3/30/25
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