Tower of Babel (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
52Tower of Babel is (an NTSC?) 3D strategy game, developed mostly by Microprose, and published by them in the U.S and Rainbird in Europe, in 1990. A demo appeared on one of the Amiga magazines, but from the screenshots it always looked a bit too technical for me. So lets break it down for this review.
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Captured: 6 Feb 2024
Narrated: 22 May 2025
Edited: Feb 2025
Uploaded: 19 Feb 2025
This one was recorded after Covert Action and before Sherman M4, fairly early on in the recording order, as most of the other games were recorded in late Feb and during March. So I know I wanted to cover this game from the start. I looked at all of the 3D games on the Lemon database, and selected this one. as it seemed like it should be straight forward. And then I loaded it up and saw the interface. Flashbacks of Interphase and not knowing anything, but after the very easy tutorial, things began to quickly make more sense. I completed the first few levels of 000 and then switched the game off and reloaded it another time, when I was ready to review it.
The footage is a bit boring, and the footstep sound effects are very low, so you cant hear the robots walking in the review without headphones. I forgot to turn up the volume to highlight that there are other sound effects in the game, but the elevator sounds really overpower everything else.
When I recorded the narration a few months later, it started raining just as I got through 20mins of it, so I carried on. You cant hear much of the rain hitting my window, but with headphones it sounds like a rustling noise. I didnt want to filter this out, as each pass of the filter makes my voice sound duller, and it already sounds dull due to filtering the noise initially. The narration is low compared to the introduction music, but I tried to turn up the volume and I could not decide with my deafness how much to turn up the in-game music to match it, and the Lost Vikings music too, so I just left it like it was. It is quiet by as least hopefully balanced, with the Lost Vikings music being slightly quieter as to not drown out the sound effects.
This review was not ready, but I knew if it won the vote, I would make it ready in time. So since the vote was 2 weeks ago, I've been putting in the hours since then, over most days, to finish it off. Most of the narration editing was completed after a week, and then the other bits were all added during the first few days of this week, with the final render happening last Wednesday (19th Feb).
Danscore:
The Amiga was not just a platform or platforming and sprite based game like the consoles tended to be. Some developers decided to make sure 3D was represented, and Microprose were no strangers to simulations. We dont know the specifics of which team coded this game, but as some went on to Microprose games, and Tower of Babel was released by Microprose, it is looking more likely this was a side project by them, rather then Rainbird. The 3D seems fairly pedestrian, with slow but smooth panning around the landscape, and walking of the robots. I would say the speed is at least much quicker than a Freescape game, although we are not talking Indi 500 or even STUN Runner in terms of drawing times. The action here lies within the subtleties of the strategy and puzzles, and the game play is more like chess - move piece X to position Y until you can zap or collect something. So the solution to each level could be laid out like a series of commands, which in fact the game almost allows the player to do, by pre-programming tasks in ahead of time. Sadly, you cant program all of the robots, and have then complete the level, because you need to keep switching them. Although you can switch and do other tasks synchronously, without noticeable slow-down.
Each screen is usually made up of a tower of up to 4 levels of height, so each map is very small compared to Archipelagos, Populous, and every other 3D game we have covered recently. So there is only the strategy element which makes this appealing. If the game was a bit faster, and the sound effects were all balanced at the same volume, I'd give it 7. But somehow I got bored of the game after recording this, and never went back. So I can only give it 6.5. The clunky interface does not make up for a lack of direct joystick control, and the true free roaming experience. Even a free-look option with the mouse could have added some dynamic atmosphere, to stop the game feeling like programming a ZX81, to move an Acorn plotting Turtle around on paper, while also wearing blinkers.