Spine-chilling horror game that has you babysit an unusual and potentially dangerous baby
Spine-chilling horror game that has you babysit an unusual and potentially dangerous baby
Pros
- An interesting premise executed well
- Completely free to play
- Great character design on the baby
Cons
- Can be completely finished in about 10 minutes
- Virtually no soundtrack to speak of
The Baby in Yellow is a game that reveals the challenges that come with babysitting by putting you in charge of a supernatural ward. What starts off as a relatively mundane series of tasks like feeding and putting the baby to bed becomes more complicated once you take into account the infant's supernatural powers. This initially mundane and simple series of tasks earns layers of complication thanks to the hijinks of your ward.
This can take a number of different forms. The baby in yellow possesses a seemingly chronic obsession with thwarting your efforts. Early on, it will trip up your actions by sneaking away. It can be elusive too. The baby can open doors and even levitate, and that means you have to constantly try to keep your eye on it even as you're engaging in activities away from it.
The game's tone finds a nice balance between the banal, the horrifying, and the comic. The graphics aren't anything to write home about, but the realism of the environment and the comic elasticity of the baby contrast with each other to create a sense of otherworldliness. And while it's unlikely the baby will be giving you nightmares, its expressive face and demonic features lend it a very strong sense of personality. It creates a feeling that you're at the mercy of otherworldly forces but anchors the whole experience in ordinary circumstances many of us have already had to deal with.
As far as gameplay, this is a game that's as much about the experience as it is about the moment-to-moment details. Don't come in expecting a AAA experience, in other words. The Baby in Yellow was designed as part of a game jam, and is understandably more about the proof of concept than it is about creating a fully-featured experience. The entirety of The Baby in Yellow can be completed in about 10 minutes, and there's nothing in the way of added objectives or complications.
That said, it gets the point across well. This is a short story rather than a novel - and if you can appreciate it for the unique work of art it is, you'll find plenty to enjoy. And elements like the lack of a prominent soundtrack are easier to swallow knowing that the scale of the game is much smaller than usual.
Pros
- An interesting premise executed well
- Completely free to play
- Great character design on the baby
Cons
- Can be completely finished in about 10 minutes
- Virtually no soundtrack to speak of
