Babbdi review – a moody urban wander straight off a PlayStation 1 demo disc

PC; Lemaitre Bros
Oppressive lo-fi visuals and brutalist architecture somehow create a game of laidback curiosity and exploration

Babbdi's secret weapon is a trumpet. Unearthed from a tower above a stagnant dockyard, it's an unexpected comic flourish in what looks like a lo-fi brutalist horror game. Making music is simple: hold left mouse button until your breath runs out, change pitch with the cursor. If you like, you can try tootling along to an in-game radio. The trumpet won't help you navigate Babbdi's vertiginous architecture - best search for the climbing axe, instead - but it's hard to put down. It transforms this world-weary first-person platformer into a game about testing the acoustics of abandoned spaces: melancholy but joyful.

Released for free over Christmas by little-known French developer Lemaitre Bros, Babbdi is a slender masterwork that cuts you adrift in a small, forsaken city. The only thing it requires you to do is leave, which is easy enough. Naturally, this heightens the intrigue. So many video game environments feel disposable - just so much scenery to ignore or blow up while chasing a foe or a waypoint - yet they are seldom actively introduced as such. What could this one be hiding?