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as a slavic (polish) person this gave me a feel of exploring some other eastern european country, starting with architecture that's very prominent in those countries, characters design with their sad faces and gray colors, but most importantly language, I feel like most of those countries have very similar language but you can't really fully understand it you'll be hearing or reading something that sounds like ur language but can't fully grasp what those words mean, and I felt the same in babbdi with signs leading to train station or informing of the building's purpose with their misspelings. Idk if I'm making sense rn, it's hard for me to fully explain my point and also I'm not native english speaker, but I hope I got it across
I completely understand! I'm half Serbian and I would visit the country very often growing up, a lot of the towns/cities look and feel a lot like Babbdi!
I understand what you mean. I’m Dominican but when I go to South America near the borders of Brazil I cant understand Portuguese but it sounds so similar to spanish
@@Fxmbroyeah they say south American Spanish/Portuguese is a completely different language. where Spanish people can't understand the Spanish spoken kinda like swiss German.
This game looks like the equivalent of urban exploring with a dream-like feel. There's something unsettling, but soothing about looking through an old, abandoned place closed down to the public and seeing remnants of what was there. This looks like something I can enjoy. 😊
When I think of concrete buildings like these, I tend to think of Soviet architecture, though that tends to be more box-y and less all over the place. Living in a Soviet apartment block felt very liminal to me, like a building out of time (even if it had wifi). I like this short format! Not every video has to be super long, especially for these smaller games. It just means you get to talk about even more games!
Brutalism always reminds me of the library where I used to work. It had this insane, angular design that, combined with the fact that it was built as cheaply as possible, meant that the roof leaked really badly. (For context, my home region has a very wet climate.) The concrete floors were also cracked and buckled, so getting a cart full of books over them was a real pain.
Jacob Geller's "Games that Don't Fake the Space" video brought my attention to this game and I wanted to look more into it. I'm absolutely convinced now and can't wait to play it.
I always find it interesting how much meaning people can derive from such simple things. I always wonder how much is intended when I analyze things or find meaning myself, so it's really fun to see a creator just straight up say "Oh, we didn't mean that at all, we just wanted a style that was easier to produce." It just goes to show the meaning that matters most is the meaning you take from a work of art.
Absolutely love your take on Babbdi, the whole game did feel very cozy past the first couple minutes. Also spotting that Hylics and Gregory Horror Show footage at the start made my day lmao B)
It's an effective bit of writing, starting with a hook, and you explain quite reasonably and rationally why it makes sense; still, I did have to pause the video, giggling with glee, when after building up the creepy / horror aspects, you cut to "Babbdi gave me a sense of comfort". Of course it did, that's the most on-brand thing I've heard. If you didn't work your way up to this point, I'd have assumed you had been replaced by aliens. Bonus point for making a sincere and serious video, and dropping "ok nerd" for a few frames. :D I love all your work, but this one was pure joy.
One of the first things I did was jump out of a window at the very start of the game thinking, "oh there's no way all of this is explorable, there's got to be a kill plane down there". And then the game just carried on. 10/10
its games like Babbdi and NaissanceE that make me adore random architecture, i love the mystery surrounding these environments! always pushing forward, looking through any small details to make sense of the absurd reality you're in.
What a great video, I loved how you delved into brutalissimo and I found it very interesting how it can be considered almost as liminal space in architecture
I've been obsessed by your videos since I watched your Death Stranding essay, I strongly feel that you are one of the greatest game content creators on youtube, great work!
it looked so interesting at first glance that I paused the video, played the game and then came back i loved the game whole vibe, its really lonely but chill and its super surreal, even though 5 minutes in i discovered that it have movement tech to zoom around with slide-jumps and that made the game non-oppressive at all, it felt super free and fast from the begging and I had to force myself to stop to actually take in the vibe, but after that i liked it a lot, it made me think of girls last tour and that's always cool
You're probably my favorite video essayist on youtube right now. Found you through your video on the thief games, and saw you did a bunch of silent hill videos, and it just snowballed. Love your style and your voice is perfect for this kinda content. Keep up the awesome work ^-^
For those who liked this game's aesthetics and also like reading manga, may try checking "BLAME!". This liminal space, brutalism and emptiness that build Babbdi is abundant in the manga aesthetics. Specially with the buildings and stairs that connect them and the residents that all seem so creepy and shady. The only exception between the aesthetics of these two works is that BLAME! is set on somewhat of a futuristic world and BABBDI seems to be set on a recent era. Great video btw, i loved watching it! Please, continue with the good work. (I'm new to the channel :])
I just played it and looked up videos only to see you describe it perfectly! Honestly a top 20 or maybe even 10 game, nothing compares to the sense of hugeness the city of babbdi gives
Stumbled across this game right after it was released, and I’m still thinking about it from time to time. Playing it, I felt the same as you described in the video. Such an effective combination of unsettling and unserious! And it manages so well to be weird without being incoherent - that’s a rare and welcome quality.
The weird wave of nostalgia I got from hearing The Woods and the Goddess at 15:00 was great. Another great vid euro and such a great game to get lost in!
Great work as usual! I absolutely adore the architecture and atmosphere in this game, it’s phenomenal. Also, I can’t explain why but the image at 11:06 made me oddly emotional.
I started playing this game just an hour ago, and I too got that strange sense of comfort. For some reason, going through these spaces and meeting the strange characters reminded me of the derelict buildings and run down towns visited throughout Russia and former Soviet territories by Benjamin from the “Bald and Bankrupt” RU-vid channel. All those place consumed by poverty, corruption and dire circumstances, yet people are happy and having as good a time as they can.
This was excellent. Had this game on my Steam wishlist for awhile now. I was immediately entranced by the atmosphere the game gave off. Kudos for covering it in such a thorough manner. I also really enjoyed your choice of music. The Yume Nikki and Fable songs were good choices.
Finally, someone is talking about it again. I'm a huge fan of Babbdi. It needs a continuation / sequel. Edit: How did you get a free camera to fly around smoothly and get a view? Like for example: 00:25
I used a unity editor to remove the crosshair and slow the game speed down, turned off head bobbing in settings and just moved (or crouched) left to right 😁
@@plado1 They are working on both, the first person shooter game can already be wishlisted on Steam, it's called "Straftat" which means criminal activity in German.
I completely forgot the name of Sludge Life after watching it on a stream a long while back. Thank you so much for giving it a shoutout here - it filled a huge knowledge gap for me.
I love how there is no lore practically for each character. Its so rich in atmosphere and aesthetic. The characters seem to blend with the limital spaces
Thank you for putting me on! I liked playing this game a lot more than I thought I would. Something about the atmosphere that makes me feel a lot of things at once and I love it.
Just discovered your channel trough you Death Stranding video. Amazing content! This game is amazing and so your analysis of it! I'm a architect doing masters on history and theory of architecture and urban planning and I would like to say that your Brutalism explanations was on point, really well made! I only would like to add that from a theory standpoint, our nostalgia for that brutal European architecture comes from a social perspective. Those buildings, even the low quality ones, had a social meaning. That's why it fill us with an eerie comfort. But today because of how our economic logic erase the social there's little space aiming the social, most spaces are aiming for profit. And so we try to search for that social that lacks in our environment and our soul. I believe, with no certainty tho, that's the same for liminal spaces, is the ghost of the socialization and the social, be it "capitalist social" or "non-capitalist social". In countries were there is brutalist architecture but it wasn't made from a social standpoint, there's no such nostalgia for it. But great video, amazing channel!
It is pretty awesome how having listened to your interpretation and then the developers' intentions, the game isn't one that funnels everyone into the same feelings or observations of its world, it is simple enough to give different people different interpretations of its world with so little, yet very complex and impressive for the same reason
I hope this doesn't come off as pretentious, but media that can give that sort of effect, having all different people feel different ways about its world, especially despite such simplicity in its constructiom is truly some great art
Honesstly I think it's very interesting that the Barbican comes up in this video, since it kinda _looks_ like a videogame level (personally I think someone should try recreating _at least_ part of it in Quake or Source).
I've been putting off Steam for a long time (I hate launchers) but within the first minute of this video I decided to bite the bullet and install it. I have to play this game for myself.
I got to say you are of my favorite youtubers. Almost all of the videos you make are catered to my interests and your the first female youtuber Ive seen that covers this sort of content. Male youtubers are good too but they have a different eye when it comes to portrayals of women in horror as a whole. I never even consider an analysis of women in horror before seeing your videos. Thank you.
These kinds of empty old places have been something ive been around for a long time. As my parents would often go to abandoned houses. It gives such a strange feeling wether the house is completely empty, or is full of random old dirty stuff. I tend to think about how at one point it was someones most visited space. But now its either a distant memory, or forgotten all together.
It may not have been the full intent of the authors, but some of the vistas in this game reminded me both of ICO and the Kowloon Walled City. It's intriguing to say the least!
I played BABBDI a few months ago. It was a great experience. The game had way less players back then than now. I knew while playing, that when this game becomes more popular, there will be videos like these about Babbdi.
"The biggest praise I can give Babbdi is that it got me to leave the house". that reminded me this line: "My name is Joseph Anderson and I've played Fallout 76 for almost 100 hours"
This game strangely reminds me of world hopping alone in VRChat. Large sprawling worlds that are made to be explored but are mostly static, and simple building and room models with occasional hidden secrets. It especially reminds me of worlds like Japan Street, a map where anyone can submit a model so long as it fits the extremely tight regulations on polygon count, texture size, color palette etc, which leads to huge differences in pixel density on the models. It’s such a weird but interesting thing to do, since it’s extremely lonely but also not since you get to see something someone spent so much time on.
I stumbled upon Babbdi by accident and thoroughly enjoyed it. Glad to see it's making an impact on people like it did me. Also, if you haven't already, would you ever do a video on NaissanceE?
Will definitely have to check this out! I've always been both drawn to and repulsed by dense urban environments and this game feels like the perfect place to explore those feelings.
BABBDI is so good, and i spent so long just trying to get to the person at the window before the shutters, along with finding all the secrets, the game is absolutely insane, and i love it! xD Also what the heck is with the orb, except for being a really strange easter egg, as i remember is being really hard to get to, then being really disappointed when i found it, as i had no idea what it was for exactly.
This reminds me of Beware, that game still hunts me but in the best way possible, such a great mix of liminal and megalophobia feel that im obsessed with.
awesome video as always friendo this game is real strange and interesting ya never fail to glue me to my seat with your takes on a game and their subject matter weather it be built in or speculated
i swear ive been playing this game for like an hour with no hope of train tickets, its such an odd game but weirdly fun to explore... this video helped me understand that its meant to be hopeless lol
I've had the exact jumpscare with the doll in the window in real life. One of my neighbors used to have a cardboard standee of Edward Cullen, and for reasons known only to them, they would leave it in the front window of their house. Every time I went by, I got startled, thinking some weirdo was standing completely motionless and staring at me.
Step 1: Read incredible detail out of it. Step 2: Speak to the devopers that debunk all the theories Step 3: ...well then.. read more into it on how it unintentionally - through emergence - created that level of detail. This is a oversaturation of course, i really like your way of interpreting the game and it is finally what makes it stand out. Thank you for this insight into the liminal world 😃
I found this game scrolling through steam and I instantly fell in love with the simplistic but dark theme. The architecture just speaks a language you didn’t know existed. 10/10 would recommend
The game looked really interesting I love the whole concrete jungle/urban decay/urban exploration thing so this was right up my alley c: Somehow, it feels like everything was perfectly placed, so even though I was just running around not knowing what to do, I ended up finishing the game in about 10 minutes Then I spent about 30 minutes trying to get the speedrun achievement, to finish it in under 4 minutes, and ended up getting it, yay Thank you for the video, and for letting us know about this wonderful game :3
Almost the entire city where I'm from was built with brutalism in mind albeit not as "plain" as what was shown in the video. Fast forward to the 2010s instead of demolishing the buildings, the government decided to paint them all with bright colors. It's an absolutely horrendous sight, i wish they kept the concrete look.
I Grew up in the Midwestern USA, here we have a lot of brutalist buildings. Most notably, it merged with the Mid-Century modern archetecture. I'm sad I couldn't do urbex at a hotel built in the 60s before it was torn down.
Hey random but i'm at uni doing history and currently preparing for my dissertation of Cultural memories and objects of remembrance. Currently researching a book called "Undoing Buildings" about "what is to be done with the huge stock of existing buildings that have outlived the function for which they were built? Their worth is well recognised and the importance of retaining them has been long debated, but if they are to be saved, what is to be done with these redundant buildings?". Remembered this video and the interesting segments on old concrete buildings in the post war world and the reverence we could have on their imperfect glory or to demolish them and its honestly helping to shape some thoughts in my head about the whole thing. In short great video and has educational merit even! (Outside the amount of times you say BABBDI 😂)
You might enjoy Touch the dead on NDS. It's as low budget as it gets, but man, it somehow nails an atmosphere, plus the crappy enemies make it more uncanny.
Yoooooooooo, found this game thanks to a twit of Moshe Linke, the kid that made it is really talented. Playing this game reminded me of the feeling of northern italian suburbia my hometown had, which I had forgotten up to that point. Cool experience.
If you like bizarre and horror, I think The Upturned would be right up your alley. It doesn’t contain a commentary of architecture but I think something about life in the afterlife idk
There can trully be no better praise for a game than having made euro go out and touch grass 🙏 Your tweet that you'll be covering the game made me actually go out and try the game before you did, and I'm so glad that was the case. It's such a funky game to experience going in mostly blind. Suprisingly, besides the vibes, it also offered a set of surprisingly fun to abuse movement mechanics! It was great seeing how they interact with the engine when pushed to their limits.
I’ve been taking summer college classes this year and taking some extra time to explore the campus while it’s near-completely empty. Gives me a lot of the same feelings, honestly.
I barely knew about this game til today, but strangely I think a week or so ago I had a nightmare about a place almost exactly like it. only difference was the people there were covered in fleshy tumors and the only sign of them still being alive was their eyes following me everywhere, and there was some strange, impossible structure in the middle of the city... I somehow managed to get inside of it, it was impossibly dark and even more impossibly big on the inside, but there was only one path forward. I walked for what seemed like hours, and... something, something horrifying, and for some reason hostile to me, was waiting at the end, so terrifying that it woke me up immediately....
