Library of Babel

Library of Babel is an experimental game inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story of the same name. The game places the player in Borges’ ‘infinite’ library and tasks them with finding information that might help prevent the spread of an amorphous catastrophe. The player must navigate the library, reading books and talking to its librarians. It is a research simulator: part tragedy, part metaphysical farce.

Download

Credits

Programming: Arttu Lakkala and Doruk Balcı
Sound Design: Krista Kanerva
Visual and Level Design: Doruk Balcı
Writing and Lead Narrative Design: Cary Mackay
Additional Writing in Turkish and Finnish: Doruk Balcı and Krista Kanerva

References

Ball, H. (1996) Flight Out of Time. Translated by John Elderfield. University of California Press.

Borges, J. L. (1941) ‘The Library of Babel’. Translated by J. E. I. https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf

Culpeper, N. (2015) The Complete Herbal. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49513

Ducasse, I (2011) Maldoror, and the complete works of the Comte de Lautréamont. Translated by Alexis Lykiard. Exact Change, Cambridge.

Snellman, Teo. (1970). Suomalainen ihanneravinto. (3rd edition). Arvi A. Karisto osakeyhtiö.

Tennyson, A. (1832) ‘The Lotos Eaters’. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45364/the-lotos-eaters

‘The Sahmeran’. https://www.wikiwand.com/tr/%C5%9Eahmeran

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. (1993) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+13&version=NRSVCE

List of tools used for random text generation:

https://github.com/first20hours/google-10000-english

https://github.com/dariusk/corpora