Babel Rising
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Babel Rising'' is a video game developed by Mando Productions and produced by Michel Bams and Olivier Fontenay. An arcade game with short levels, the 2D version of the game was first published in 2009 and in 3D in 2012. ''Babel Rising 3D'' was published with Xbox achievements for
Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft, released on October 29, 2012. It runs on the Windows NT kernel and is the successor to Windows Phone 7. It was the first ...
and
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
in October 2013. The storyline is based on the legend of the Tower of Babel, where God unleashes his wrath and powers against pagans who endeavor to build a tower to reach him. The goal is to stop them from ever reaching the skies. The player impersonates God and uses their powers to destroy the workers or the tower they are trying to build.


Plot

The game is a fanciful adaptation of a biblical context. At the time of the construction of the city of
Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...
, the humans erect a tower meant to reach the skies and they show such arrogance as to supposedly irritate God-the player. The action takes place in an imaginary Babylon and uses various monuments and places associated to this civilization. The game does not take itself seriously and, as such, disregards historical facts. Workers can thus build the
Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shin ...
, the
Ishtar Gate The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon (in the area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq). It was constructed by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was part of a grand walled proce ...
, the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture. They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of tree ...
, but also more fanciful buildings such as a giant statue. The characters in the game are the workers that the player must incessantly destroy whilst they carry on with the construction of the tower. Depending on the version, the player may also face protector priests who will fend off her/his powers, or siege towers that the workers will have placed next to the tower. The only named character in the series is King Nabu, and is a reference to
Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir", was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Often titled Nebuchadnezzar ...
, famous for his building of Babylon. Nabu is portrayed as a secret tyrant, the most arrogant of all human beings, the man who issues the construction orders that anger the player. He is mentioned but never actually represented during the game, and the player never has the opportunity to eradicate him in person.


Gameplay

The gameplay of ''Babel Rising'' mixes action and management of resources: the divine powers. The player has an array of powers that they may send at a chosen location, the only limitation being the recharging time for each power. The more the powers recharge, the more powerful they become; this generates tactical choices and forces players to take risks for maximum earnings. If at first, it seems easy to destroy all the workers as they come closer, as the player progresses in the game, choosing the right moment to send each power becomes increasingly difficult. Sooner or later, the player will quite often be overwhelmed and the tower will rise slowly to game over. ''Babel Rising'' uses a combo system to accrue higher scores. This allows for a longer game lifespan, by creating competition for first place. All the versions have online rankings, so as to compare scores with other players throughout the world. The concept of ''Babel Rising'' is to stop the construction of the tower. Hence the goal is to survive as long as possible. The game also offers various missions with required conditions for victory, such as to eliminate a given amount of adversaries.


Development

''Babel Rising'' was originally a co-production of White Birds Productions studio and Exequo. White Birds Productions ceased to exist in December 2010 and Exequo carried through with the development of the game and of its sequels, in partnership with Mando Productions, who was in charge of creating and producing all the new versions of the game. The initial version of ''Babel Rising iPhone'' was developed using tools internal to the development team at White Birds, some of which were specifically designed for the game itself. The ensuing versions were progressively centralized in a unique middleware, Shiva, developed by the firm Stonetrip. All developments were carried out by internal teams at Mando Productions and a few collaborators from the outside, using Shiva as the main engine. ''Babel Rising 3D'' was also developed with Shiva, and produced in eight versions in parallel: XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac, IOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry. The 2D version is available for 4 platforms: iPhone, Android, PC and WiiWare. The original soundtrack was composed by
Philippe Saisse Philippe Saisse (; born 1957) is a French jazz musician, composer, record producer, and arranger. Career He was born in Marseille and raised in Paris. After studying at the Paris Conservatory he won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. ...
.


Reception

The iOS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received "mixed" reviews, while the PC version received "unfavorable" reviews, according to the
review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
. It was criticized on several counts. The main reproach was the repetitive aspect of the game, but criticism also pointed at technical inaccuracies in the console version of ''Babel Rising 3D'' (Kinect and PS Move).


Sales

In July 2012, the ''Babel Rising'' license reached 2.5 million downloads, for all the versions of the game. In the following month, in the space of two weeks, ''Babel Rising 3D'' reaped an additional million downloads, thanks to the game's transition to Free-to-play on Google Play, bringing the total to over 3.5 million downloads. The game ''Babel Rising'' was number one (free or paying version) in over 25 countries.


References


External links

* * {{usurped,
Official website of Mando Productions
}
Bulkypix
2009 video games Android (operating system) games Works set in Babylon IOS games Kinect games MacOS games PlayStation Network games Single-player video games Tower defense video games Ubisoft games Video games developed in France WiiWare games Windows games Windows Phone games Xbox 360 Live Arcade games PlayStation Move-compatible games