The Library of Babel Review: Putting It All Together
The Library of Babel makes a great first impression. With beautiful hand-drawn graphics, excellent music, and a unique world, there’s a ton to like as you make your way through this interesting adventure. The early hours mostly work well, too, clearly drawing inspiration from cinematic platformers of ages past. Before long, though, gameplay issues get in the way just a bit too often for the game’s own good, making The Library of Babel a title that has all the pieces to be excellent in place but doesn’t always know how to put them together.
Of Course, The Cats Survived
Set 20,000 years after the extinction of humanity, The Library of Babel takes place in a world largely populated by robots. Well, robots and cats. Humans didn’t survive, but cats made it, which sounds about right. Ludovik is a seeker; someone meant to look into issues in various parts of the world, who has been sent to investigate a cult and a series of strange murders happening in a remote area. It’s all tied to the discovery of a library containing every word ever written, an important resource in a world where much of the knowledge of humanity was lost when we left the planet.
Your investigation sends you all over this remote outpost and the surrounding areas as you’ll work through jungles, warehouses, and mountains as you try to figure out what the cult is up to and what they want. Doing so involves a mixture of platforming and stealth, along with some puzzle-solving. In the early going, the game manages to at least mostly stay out of its own way. All three of these elements work at least somewhat, and the challenges the game throws at you are fairly minor. The platforming isn’t super responsive, but you don’t need to pull off any crazy jumps, either. Puzzles are somewhat obtuse and don’t provide a lot of direction, but they do make you think, and the answers are there if you put the time in to explore. I came to appreciate that The Library of Babel wasn’t holding my hand. Even the stealth mechanics in the early part of the game, while fairly simple, aren’t ever offensive.
Losing Your Way
As The Library of Babel continues, though, it pushes some of these elements beyond what they’re able to support. Puzzles simply stop being enjoyable; they push things too far and require logic that doesn’t always hold together, becoming more a series of trial and error than anything else. The difficulty of the platforming sections ramps up to a level that the game’s slightly stiff controls really can’t support. Stealth sections offer fewer areas to hide and far more difficult areas to sneak through. A fairly generous respawn system means you likely won’t need to wait long to try again, and you’re using up minimal resources each time you die, but it ends up feeling more like a crutch than a real solution. The developers knew players wouldn’t have to go too far out of their way when they died, so they didn’t have to fix the situation which would repeatedly kill them. I’m all for a challenge, but I want to feel like when I die, it’s mostly my fault. Most of the time when I died in The Tower of Babel, it felt like it had to do with the game’s lacking mechanics.
That doesn’t take away from the strong aesthetics on display here. The more I explored the world of The Library of Babel, the more I came to love it. Every new area is beautifully drawn, and I smile just looking at the screenshots in this article. The development team did a fantastic job creating an interesting world with a fantastic atmosphere, and the story is never less than interesting, even if it perhaps could have benefitted from slightly stronger characters at the core of it. With so much to like, though, that only makes it more frustrating when such core parts of the game’s design just don’t hold their weight. Even basics like your inventory are clunky and poorly designed, and while I appreciate that The Library of Babel takes a few moments to acquaint you with these systems at the start, that doesn’t make them work any better.
Conclusion
There’s a ton to like about The Library of Babel. From a presentation standpoint, this is one of the strongest games I’ve played in 2023. That just makes it more annoying when the title’s core gameplay mechanics don’t hold up to the experience the developers have created. While they’re mostly okay in the early going, as the game tries to push players further, they simply don’t hold up well to what’s being asked of them. I still overall had a good time with The Library of Babel, and this is a game that, with a bit more refinement, could really have been something special, but as is, this is a game I can only recommend strongly to die-hard fans of classic cinematic platformers.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5
Available on: Switch (Reviewed), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC; Publisher: Neon Doctrine; Developer: Tanuki Game Studio; Players: 1; Released: April 7th, 2023; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $18.99
Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of The Library of Babel provided by the publisher.
