The brutality of reaching for heaven

Pit of Babel is a free puzzle video game wherein you have to create a tower from the processed remains of strange but cute creatures. Developed by Scottie Supple and Maceo bob Mair, this dark and brutal 2D atmospheric game features a compelling tale wrought in despair. You must try to reach the top of a desolate pit you’re trapped in to find answers as to why you’re in there in the first place.

All for everyone’s dream

Like one of the developer’s other games, Perfect Vermin and Swallow the Sea, Pit of Babel relies on surreal horror elements. It makes use of grotesque imagery and unsettling events gradually unfolding in the story. In the beginning, you’re placed in an area where a harmless creature lives. You can feed it the orbs that slowly grow from another strange creature; doing so will make it self-reproduce one copy and no more.

Unlike the two games, you’re free to play around first and eventually find the floating tutorial text as you explore around by pointing your cursor to the edges of the screen to move the camera. You must drop each creature that’s already reproduced into the grinding machine to create a random puzzle block. Here’s where the game offers tower-building mechanics with Tetris blocks—however, this game’s theme is nothing like Tetris’ at all. 

As you build higher, you will hit six orbs that trigger a well-written story narration—talking about your struggle to discover answers. The higher you go, the harder it will be to upgrade the tower. New hostile creatures will eventually try to eat your block fodder, and near the end, the grinder will get broken—although, sometimes before that, the game will glitch and not spawn any fodder, so you might have to restart.

Your true self in the pit

Pit of Babel offers a more depressing story compared to the two other games. It has tedious block puzzle mechanics that you have to go through to get to the end. The whole process is laborious, and it doesn’t make things easier, knowing that you’re constantly sacrificing such adorable creatures to use them for your machinations. This features more text in storytelling, as well, slowing down the pace of the surmounting horror.