External Links


babel-31.hqx
Mac OS Application (Encoded in Macintosh Bin/Hex format.)
Babel.exe
Windows Application
Babel31.gam
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
babel.gam
as entered in 1997 competition
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
BabelMap.pdf
map
To view this file, you need an Acrobat Reader for your system.
hints.txt
hints
walk1.in
solution
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn
Play online in browser
Play online in browser using elseifplayer
Play this game in your Web browser.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Babel

by Ian Finley

Mystery, Science Fiction
1997

(based on 150 ratings)
10 reviews

About the Story

In this game, you play as an amnesiac inside Babel, an abandoned Arctic facility devoted to biological research. You soon discover that you have the unusual ability to witness scenes from the past by touching various glowing items. But can you discover who you are, what happened to the station, and then how to escape from Babel?


Game Details


Awards

Nominee, Best Game; Nominee, Best Writing; Winner, Best Story; Nominee, Best Puzzles; Nominee, Best Individual PC - 1997 XYZZY Awards

2nd Place - 3rd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (1997)

13th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2015 edition)

49th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2023 edition)

Editorial Reviews

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

SPAG
Babel combines science fiction and horror imaginatively, so that the separate elements of each genre support and enhance rather than fight each other.
-- Laurel Halbany
See the full review

SPAG

In the realm of science fiction, very trodden ground indeed, Ian Finley's Babel does not seem profoundly original; you have an experiment in an isolated lab that goes wrong, an unscrupulous scientist, dramatic confrontations, even a countdown of sorts. But the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts, and there is more to Babel than might appear from a thumbnail sketch. The puzzles are few and not particularly remarkable, but for simple storytelling power, this one ranks among the best in the competition.
-- Duncan Stevens
See the full review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

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.
See the full review

ferkung
Babel (1997) by Ian Finley - Full Playthrough
2nd Place in the 1997 Interactive Fiction Competition, winner of a bunch of Xyzzy awards from the same year.

Finley was 17 when he wrote Babel. An interview with him from the time is here: http://www.spagmag.org/archives/backi...

Watch streams of text adventures and other narrative games live at https://twitch.tv/ferkung
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(64)
4 star:
(60)
3 star:
(22)
2 star:
(3)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 10
Write a review


Most Helpful Member Reviews


24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
A towering achievement?, September 25, 2010
by Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands)

I started playing Babel with high, very high expectations. Right now, the game has 27 5-star ratings, 24 4-star ratings, and only 7 ratings below that. This game, I was thinking, must be a towering achievement, one of the true classics of modern interactive fiction.

It is obviously very hard for a game to live up to that kind of reputation, and Babel did not. But I was somewhat surprised at how great the discrepancy between the critical consensus and my own judgement about the game turned out to be: what most people apparently see as a nearly flawless game revealed itself to me as a very problematic piece -- interesting, mostly fun, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Just because other critics have been so almost unanimously positive, I believe it will be most useful if I focus on the reasons why I did not like the game. It's not a bad game. I could say many positive things about it. But you can read up on those in the other reviews (see also here). So, with the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, let's move on to my complaints.

Babel is set in an abandoned scientific base on one of the poles, far from all human contact. It becomes apparent very early on that the amnesiac player character has a special ability: he can touch certain things in the world, that he perceives as glowing, and these will then project forth emotionally-charged scenes that happened nearby at some time in the near past. Much of the game consists of the player hunting for such glowing objects, so that he can trigger these flashbacks.

Although justified in the narrative, this is obviously a plot device thought up only so that the author can bombard the player with non-interactive cut-scenes. Rather than telling a story in which the player (note that I'm not saying "player character") participates, we get to slowly uncover a story that has already taken place. In other words, Babel has fallen into the dreadful trap of excessive reliance on backstory. As Stephen Bond memorably puts it: "If Lord of the Rings had consisted mostly of Frodo recovering lost pages of The Silmarillion, then no one would ever have read it." But this is almost precisely what Babel does.

Playing the game consists of the tired old routine of thoroughly searching everything you encounter, writing down all the clues, collecting keys, and then opening doors that you couldn't open before you found the right key or the right piece of information. This will open up new areas that you get to search thoroughly, find keys in, and... well, you understand what's going on. Except that this time, we also get to read very long cut-scenes whenever we find a glowing object.

It's not that this is unenjoyable per se. Although the puzzles are nothing to write home about (expect combination codes for safes and fiddling with intricate machinery), the environment is interesting, the cut-scenes are generally well-written, and the story, although hardly fresh, is worth perusing. But look at it this way. As an author, you have thought up an interesting story. Now what would be more exciting for a player: (1) being dropped into the middle of that story so you get to perceive it first-hand and act in it, in other words, experiencing your fictional story as interactive fiction; or (2) solve a bunch of thirteen-in-a-dozen IF puzzles and be rewarded by reading excerpts from a static fiction story that you have written out beforehand? Of course (1) more exciting. It is also harder to implement, but nobody said making good interactive fiction was easy.

Okay, so the gameplay is uninspiring and to a great extent detached from the story. Not entirely detached, of course, and Finley attempts to tie in the backstory with the interactive present in several ways. The most important of these is that you get clues to solve puzzles from the cut-scenes. But that's still me just experiencing the story from afar and then opening locked doors. The others are that (a) the back-story gives vital information for understanding who the player character is, which is finally revealed at a dramatic moment; and that (b) we learn the end of the back-story only in the present. But again, all of this is non-interactive. (And the big revelation about the player character will surely be guessed by every player long, long before it actually happens.)

Which leaves me somewhat baffled. This game is more than adequate, but it is definitely not great. It's very standard interactive fiction with a relative standard story pasted onto it a totally non-interactive way. So why do Andrew Plotkin and Paul O'Brian give it a 10 and a 9.8 respectively? Why do half the reviewers on this site give it 5 stars? I have no idea -- but if you wish to comment, please do.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (4) - Add comment 

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
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.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Pride before a fall, April 18, 2013
by Andromache (Hawaii)

I played Babel several years ago. Enough time had passed that I didn’t remember the puzzles, but I did remember I enjoyed the game and was particularly moved by the story. I’m happy to report it is still true.

There were a couple points where I considered looking up hints, but I didn’t need them. Puzzles made sense and I liked how the game was very clear about why something wouldn’t work. (Spoiler - click to show)The radiation puzzle was particularly ingenious, since it was understandable that the machine would be able to talk and report problems, which has the side effect of helping the player follow proper procedures. My only problem was getting the game to understand me sometimes. Wasn’t so much verb guessing as phrasing issues. Sometimes, I had to split commands and let the game ask me for clarification to get what I wanted. But it didn’t happen often and certainly wasn’t frustrating enough to make me stop playing.

Where this game really shines is characterization. I think the characters are some of the most vivid and three-dimensional I have ever seen in the IF I’ve played. While playing, I felt as though I were watching a movie. I think there was the right blend of story and puzzles. Some games, such as those that have a lot of conversation, feel like I’m reading a book and am just there to press the right buttons and turn pages. I feel like I should just read a book. I’d get more story at one time. Babel gave a sense of purpose interspersed with cut scenes that gradually fleshed out a dramatic and tragic tale. (Spoiler - click to show)Admittedly, the calendar felt contrived, but I can forgive that since it was useful for the overall story. All the characters had good and bad traits; everyone was culpable for what happens in the story. It’s not like you can say one person was the mastermind and everyone else just went along. Setting was well done; there was definitely a sense of isolation and a quiet, creeping horror that doesn’t overdo it on the overt graphic images. I came away feeling just as I did last time - horrified but in a satisfied way. The ending felt fair, right, with just the right amount of pain to add an emotional component. Think of Anakin Skywalker and his subsequent failure, and you have Babel.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

See All 10 Member Reviews

If you enjoyed Babel...

Related Games

Other members recommend this game for people who like Babel:

All Roads, by Jon Ingold
Average member rating: (152 ratings)
"Wave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of paradise." [--blurb from Competition Aught-One]

Suggest a game

Recommended Lists

Babel appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Not Too Long, Not Too Difficult by Eric Mayer
Being impatient and puzzle-challenged, I prefer rather short games that I can make it through without resorting to hints every other turn. The following leap to mind, in no particular order.

Annotated list of best sci-fi games by MathBrush
A few months ago, I thought, "There really aren't that many sci-fi IF games". Then I started going through old games I had played, and downlaoded TADS, and was shocked at how many great sci-fi games there are. This is a list of my...

Noteworthy Games Which Can't Be Played on the Web by Walter Sandsquish
Because TADS 2 is still missing a TADS Web UI or Glk server or a JavaScript 'terp.

See all lists mentioning this game

Polls

The following polls include votes for Babel:

IF that purposely conceals crucial player character information by Puddin Tame
IF that doesn't explicitly clue players in on knowledge they would/should have if they actually were the player character (The character's motivation, interests, relevant parts of their past etc.), which, for good or bad, results in some...

A Poll About ... A Poll About ... Hm. That's Funny. I Can't Recall. by Ghalev
As of the founding of this poll, the IFDB has only seven games with the "amnesia" tag. I don't buy that for an instant. Please vote for games where the player-protagonist-person is dealing with a bout of forgetfulness (usually about who...

Games with an abrupt and unexpected ending twist by dutchmule
I'm looking for games which, as in a lot of short stories, feature a sudden and unexpected revelation/twist at the very end of the game, that possibly changes your interpretation of what the game was really all about. (but please be...

See all polls with votes for this game




This is version 12 of this page, edited by JTN on 5 February 2024 at 3:07am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page