Babel

Baf's Guide

You wake up with amnesia in an abandoned research station in the Arctic. As you explore, psychometric visions give you glimpses of the lives of four scientists and the tragedy that befell them. Before you can escape, you'll have to learn your own history. Consistently grim and claustrophobic in tone, with good character development and plenty of suspense. Good detail, with lots of special cases handled. More of a story-game than a puzzle-game, with frequent noninteractive sequences that somehow manage to avoid feeling intrusive, but contains quite a few mechanical puzzles all the same.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

>VERBOSE -- Paul O'Brian's Interactive Fiction Page

Babel is not only one of the best competition games I've ever played, it's one of the best pieces of interactive fiction I've ever seen, period. The game starts from a well-worn IF trope: you awaken alone, with no memory of your identity. Then, Babel unfolds into a breathtaking, emotional story.
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

Well-crafted fear, July 8, 2010
Babel gets high marks from me in every way -- the story is compelling, the prose is beautiful, and the puzzles are well woven into the stoy. You are thrown almost violently into the world of the Babel Project station from the first sentence; while it's only a short-to-mid-length game, the sensory details will linger disconcertingly in the back of your mind for days afterward. It may be cliched, but the amnesia/flashback device is played here masterfully.

Every detail and every puzzle in this game is there for a reason; the player isn't made to jump through hoops just for the sake of mental exercise. Why are the keys to routine parts of the station so hard to obtain? By the end of the game you will know and it will make sense. The writing also gives an overwhelming sense of urgency while not, as far as I could tell, actually having a time-limit coded into the game (other than in one puzzle, which you can do over if you mess up). This makes it very playable for relatively new players apt to go over and over things like me.

No character in this game is morally unambiguous. They are human, fallible, and very believable. Some scenes do stray just over the line into melodramatic or preachy, and the romantic subplot seemed a bit unnecessary to me. But that's only a tiny quibble in what is otherwise a seamless and chilling story.

Wonderfully done, January 15, 2009
The game begins with you not knowing anything about yourself; your name, where you are, or how you got here. For some reason, you can see the past, and hence you start to investigate what has been happening here.

The story and the way it unfolds bit by bit is breathtaking and fascinating. It made me work furiously at the puzzles, only because I wanted to find out what would happen after this. Of course, the ending was wonderfully crafted, too. You couldn't ever suspect such a thing happening, but after it happens, you find out that it makes sense.

I wholeheartedly recommend this piece of IF to everyone who hasn't tried it yet.

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