A downloadable library for Windows and macOS

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Deep within the computer, a library grows.

Wander through a gentle garden of words, an endless oasis of serenity. Discover the mumblings and memories of other storytellers, and be inspired to leave your own.


Best encountered over a warm mug of coffee (with your fondest cassette mix-tape ♫ ♪) and snuggled up on a cold winters morning, the Library Of Babble is an experimental prototype designed around smaller acts of storytelling and prose, and the wish for  more-intimate spaces of shared asynchronous communication.




            write small stories as you wander, and discover stories written by others


 In many ways, this game is a small recollection of my earliest internet moments. Of snuggling away to discover the sometimes strange and surreal communities that grew there, and how distant yet intimate it all still felt. 

So on that small footnote, thanks so much for taking the time to consider my game, and here's simply wishing you all the warmest on your journey 



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SOME KIND WORDS



"I love it, I think"
Making a place from just a handful of pieces
Christian Donlan. Eurogamer


"Games with other people can be tiring, but games by yourself can be isolating. Games with other people. but separate from them, then, can be a lovely sweet spot somewhere in the middle, where you can run into moments of connection while being sheltered by asynchronicity."
Find fragmentary messages
Jay Castello. Rock Paper Shotgun


"Its calm, straightforward nature presents a place that feels safe, like an intimate space, one into which our deepest emotions can be poured. "
Following footsteps in the sand 
Catherine Brinegar. Re:bind




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CONTROLS

  • Navigate through the library using WASD or the ARROW KEYS, or by holding down the LEFT MOUSE-BUTTON and DRAGGING
  • Stories may placed by tapping ENTER at certain points, and written with a standard keyboard.


REMINDER

  • This game requires an internet connection to play.
  • This is first and foremost a space to explore gentle acts of storytelling and prose. Write with kindness and love, as instances of abusive or otherwise cruel language (misogynistic, racist, homophobic or otherwise) won't be tolerated and offenders may get permanently banned from publishing further content. 



Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

Library Of Babble - Windows.zip 23 MB
Version 3
Library Of Babble - MacOS.zip 40 MB
Version 3

Development log

Comments

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Viewing most recent comments 2 to 41 of 42 · Next page · Last page

im only finding flat coloured blocks, how do i get the cool hills?

(+1)

The feather mark doesn't seem to fill up at all, I do i find the specific points to write a story.

(2 edits)

I won't give away too many secrets

but I promise if you keep walking for a few minutes, you will eventually find a few spaces to write in ♡

(+1)

Took me some time to figure it out.

Love the game btw

(+1)(-22)

"Homophobic", that is not a phobia, such a phobia does not exist, it is a hate and disgust, either you did not know or you should not be talking about writing nice.

(+1)

I left a message! Maybe someone will find it? I dunno.

Also, I'd like to say one thing, this game for some reason was extremely taxing on my GPU, maxing it out the whole time. My graphics card isn't the best thing in the world but it's also not the worst thing either. Anyone else having FPS problems?

(+3)

I know this is old, but it would be great if you could patch this to play on MacOS. Right now it loads and I can move around, but all the "layers" are full sheets at all times without any topography. Also not getting sound if that's a thing here. Looks really beautiful and I'd love to be able to play it.

(+1)

As I understand you are making somethink like internet, am I wrong?

(+2)

Such a cool idea! Nice aesthetic too, quite the calming game. Good job, dev! 

(+2)

I love that this exists

(+1)

played this a while ago and finally remembered to come back and comment. this was lovely and it's such a great example of what games can be. i've been stalking you on mastodon and i'm really excited for your next project/s!!

(+1)

aww it's so lovely to see you here, thank you so kindly much!

mac version isnt working still :(

(+1)

this is a really interesting concept! I love reading through little pieces of others' creativity, and the visuals are really peaceful. though I'm seeing a lot of people (myself included) can't seem to find any quills to leave our own stories and continue building the community. I was wondering if there's any updates planned to accommodate that? regardless, it's a neat little communal library, and I'm having fun wandering around<33

sadly no updates are planned to accommodate that, that was a real shortcoming in how I designed the game. If you keep wandering though, you should eventually find a few spaces where nobody has written any stories yet

this was (in a small sense) my first foray into designing a small social space, and I genuinely didn't imagine how many people would take to it ♡

I gotcha, it's a lovely experience! you did a great job with it! 

(+1)

hiya! i love the game, and as i was reading through the comments i stumbled upon a comment from two years ago stating that you may take down the servers. i was wondering if you have done that? 

(+3)

thankfully my financial system has changed since then, and the servers will continue to be up for the foreseeable future ♡ 

(+2)

In case you were considering it, please don't add voting system. That'd only make people write shit for points.

that was actually my exact reasoning for never adding one

I was exploring whether people would still write in a space without any extrinsic motivations, and the results so far have surpassed any of my expectations ♡

(1 edit) (+1)

This is lovely. thank yew for making this. \( ̄︶ ̄*\))

*edit* kinda maybe made a zine with help from yewr thingy. https://mosh-pup.itch.io/some-lost-some-found. if it isnt cool i can take it down,

(+1)

aww, thank you so kindly much!

I just had a small read through your zine, and it's so lovely!

(+7)

So so pretty. I left a little message myself. If you're reading this one, keep going for me will you? Just get out of bed in the morning. You've got this.

Enjoyed the game! Took me ~20 quills before I found one I could write on, but wasn't too bad. Left some song lyrics by one of my favorite small artists!

(+2)

that sounds simply beautiful ♡

I'm so sorry it took so long to discover a quill, I genuinely never anticipated that so many people would drift through when I designed the space. I've learned so much about scalable design through this one mistake alone

(1 edit)

I think the terrain shader isn't working properly on mac - it stays as a solid block even when I move, so I can't see any of the things under it. Love the idea though!

I'm so sorry to hear so

To be honest mac computers have long been an issue, due to the way the terrain is being generated. It appears to work on most mac computers, including the one I test from, but sadly at this point I'm no longer in a position to verify how playable is for all mac configurations. 

(+1)

Am I still able to upload my own stories and messages? Or have I downloaded an offline version with no repercussion whatsoever? Thank you!

(+1)

You're still able to write and upload your own messages, and they will appear for everyone else too!

Thats great! Thank you

(+4)

genuinely an amazing idea and executed so beautifully.

(+2)

Absolutely beautiful. Got this a few months ago but only just got chance to spend some time with it - I'm ill today so have to rest.

The little white flowers - are they the stories by other people? I can't work out how to click on them or read them.

The stories will appear faintly on your screen if you're not close enough to the source! Stories are black arrows/markers that appear on the map!

(+1)

This is such a beautiful idea, thank you for making this! It's relaxing, the colours are very pretty, it is nice to have a place to leave little messages to someone-somewhere-sometime, and finding other people's stories feels like finding a treasure.
Unfortunitely, currently I'm experiencing problems finding any content. I got this game in August 2019, and back then I had no problem finding other people's stories. I tried finding some of the stories I have already found (I have screenshots of them so I have the coordinates), but they were not present too. It seems that I am unable to connect. Possibly it has something to do with my location (Eastern Europe, Russia).

I'm so sorry to read this

the servers are located in Sydney, Australia — so some people in Northern Europe have mentioned similar connection timeouts. Sadly at this point I don't have the time to transfer to a more reliable server-base, and the servers are likely to be closed down early next year (they've just gotten too expensive).

However, I will releasing an offline version about then too, containing all the messages people have written since. So hopefully you'll be able to discover all your messages in time ^^

(-2)

I have an internet connection, but it seems that it didnt connect? Idk i found it frustrating to try to find out what i was doing, only now to realise that its supposed to show other peoples writings? I just got bored with my own stuff and saw no connection between my writings and the generated scene. Maybe add a note in the game that says more clearly what its for and how its supposed to work? Like i wasted my own time here reading back my senseless nothings and looking at a scene that got boring after the first 3 mins.

This is a very good game, I enjoy reading the stories and messages people have left out there if just to add to a sea of beauty by making your day better, on a different note however I'd like to ask how you are supposed to get a full quill, am I just doing it wrong? At some point the quill does not fill further as it decreases in every other direction, though it is likely my own fault. Otherwise I love this game!

Damn this game is beautiful, how do you generate that terrain?

thank you so kindly much ~ 

in the most simple sense it uses a few perlin noise samples to generate a perlin texture, before applying a gaussian blur (smoothing things out) and separating out the generated perlin texture into nine different textures by averaging out the monochromatic color values (first texture contains all colors valued from 0-0.1, ect)

I downloaded the game a few weeks ago and I tried to launch it, but it automatically closes. Is this a bug or my laptop? 

(1 edit)

oh — I'm so sorry to hear that

If it's a bug it's not one I've presently come across
but that doesn't mean it's not one 

Thanks for the reply. I got it work after a lot of tries but it seems to be working now. I'm unsure if it was Itch that was causing it to crash because it runs fine when opening it from the local file. Thank you though :)

(+2)

Is there/will there be a place where all the stories are collected that we can view?

(+1)

Hey I really enjoy using this (game? software? virtual space?) its nice to leave things behind for other to find, and to uncover what others have written, without a date or name attached. Its like that feeling you get when you're little and suddenly realise you can make a time capsule and leave it in your attic, or write a letter to your future self. I was wondering though, is it there a database where all the messages are stored? It would be cool to see them all together in one place, to be able to key-search words and see what common themes pop up in people's writing etc.  

thank you so kindly much, that's such a lovely comparison ~

there is currently a database, though I'm hesitant to ever make the messages publically available unless within a strictly academic context (such as a journal on digital humanities, discourse analysis or similar)

(+2)

As the developer, are you able to see all the messages?

I am — purely from a moderation stand-point. But rest assured all messages are anonymous, and there's no way I'm able to decipher the original poster (I check the database about once a week)

Thanks for replying, your game is very good

(+1)

Some people say they didn't find other stories, but I can't find place for my own. The quill fills up fully in some places, but it just doesn't let me type anything.

oh well not gonna share my stuff then >:D one of the best games on the website nonetheless <3

oh dear — I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm not really sure what may be causing that I'm afraid 

Thank you nevertheless for reaching out, time permitting I'll be sure to look into sometime ♡

(+2)

this game is really lovely!! it's really enjoyable, and i'm having a lot of fun with it.  my movement and typing is laggy at a lot of times, but i think it might be because of the server thing you mentioned in a couple comments. i also think maybe implementing a map feature to show where you've been/to mark places might be a cool idea, along with maybe sizing up the landscape. again, super cool game, i can't wait to see what else you do with it and continue playing it!

(+1)

What a lovely piece. It surprised me how much it provides an environment favorable for writing. The minimal interface feels like a clean and comfy desk.
Unfortunately I experience continuous lag: moving around is jerky, and there's delay in the typing.
Any idea what may be the cause? I had no other program running consuming bandwidth or CPU juice.

(1 edit)

I'm so sorry to only read this now —

What system were you playing it on? 
I'm still pretty inexperienced with GPU programming (which generates the visual geography) myself, and MacOS devices in particular seems to really struggle 

(3 edits)

No problem with the late answer, really.
I'm using Windows10,  on an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10 Ghz, 8Gb RAM, GPU is an Nvidia GTX770. Not top-notch material, I know :).
I read the other comments in the meantime and saw the Babble servers were located in Australia. I'm in France, so maybe that's the reason?
Anyway, cheers! Still a beautiful project you have here.

aww, in that mere case your hardware should be more than suitable enough :)

I suspect that may be the case, a few people way up in the northern hemisphere have had issues. I think in future experiences I'll look into multi-server support — sorry for the troubles!

(+1)

I'm having similar issues. Framerate of about 1 frame per second. I find that the game is using less than 10% cpu and less than 200MB ram. Windows 10. Geforce GTX 1060 or thereabouts. The lag begins only after the unity logo (in the game). No command line output.

At this point I'm inclined to believe this may be due to the specific unity version this was built under, since it's only effecting specific devices.  I'm not really certain what the solution may currently be sorry, and am unfortunately not really in a position to explore this further at the moment either

(+2)

I'm having a hard time finding places to write stories. I'm seeing quill pens appear and slowly get filled in as I approach map spots, but somehow it never gets more than halfway full, and I can't find a map position where it fills in completely. Am I doing anything wrong?

Not at all, I'm sorry you've been having troubles —

In some sense it's a mistake on my part, since as the spawn has begun filling up with more stories — so too must people wander further adrift to discover places where they be able to write. My suggestion may be to simply keep wandering in a single direction, and I'm sure you'll discover someplace nice soon :)

(+1)

I like the style, it looks really inspiring. And I discovered some cute stories. It would be even better if there was some comfy music or gentle soundeffects.

(+1)

Nice idea!

Two questions:

1. Is it normal that only one story is saved per game session?

2. Can i write in my native speach, too (German)?

(4 edits) (+1)

aww, thank you ♡

  • You may write as many stories as you wish per play session - some have even written as many as twenty to thirty different stories.
  • And you're more than welcome to write in German. The support for umlauts and non-English characters may be a bit hesitant, but otherwise it should be okay :)


    I can't write more than two stories. After that no more stories will be saved. I have to restart the game.

    I'm so sorry to hear that, I'm not sure quite what may be causing that.

    If you're located in the Northern Hemisphere it's possible the connection may be timing out (servers are located in Australia), so may take a look at it sometime this week. 

    Maybe that's the reason why I only see one story of another per game session!?

    I believe that may be the case, I'm so sorry to hear that. At this point I'm unable to transfer (or split) the server to a more accessible location, but I would be more than happy to offer a full refund if you wish :)

    just awesome

    Great Game. I probably wouldn't pay money for it but it was still a great experience. At least its free now

    Thank you for the feedback, 

    The game will only be available for free until September 8th, In the mere hopes it may be a gentle space of comfort for those currently needing it most ♡

    This was an amazing experience, thank you!

    thank you for the kinds words ~

    Wow.

    (+1)

    Sorry for my russian, but....
    Это просто замечательная вещь. Мне немного грустно, что я не нашёл ни одной чужой записи, но оставил парочку своих.

    Тем не менее, огромное спасибо Вам, за создание этого

    (1 edit)

    I'm so sorry you weren't able to discover any messages, I'm not sure what may be causing that.

    But rest assured yours safely arrived and can be discovered by others ~ just reading through them now (through google translate), and they're beautiful ♡

    Мне кажется, что я нашла Ваши истории ;)

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