Tower Of Babel [Atari ST]
by Shaun Watters

Tower Of Babel is one of those truly great games that got really 
good reviews when it was released and yet nobody bought. And because 
nobody played it... Nobody remembers it. All except me, of course, 
and I'm here to tell you it's one damn fine puzzler! 

The basic gist of the game is that it's kind of a 3D Sokoban game 
with a lot of other stuff thrown in. 

You control three droids: a zapper, a pusher and a grabber. Now 
each droid has a unique ability that the others haven't got... 
One being able to zap. Other push and... Another. Errr, grab! 

Each level is made up of a number of floors, all displayed in 
full 3D and the object of the level can be anything from collecting 
a set amount of gold, to killing all the bad guys. 

Each of the three droids are controlled through a programmable first 
person Dungeon Master style interface. Standing in the way of your 
objective is a series of traps and puzzles that must be overcome 
using the abilities of each droid. To give you an better idea of 
what I'm talking about, here's an example: Imagine a thin road with 
three droids at one end and a bar of gold at the other. In the way 
is a sheet of glass and a boulder. You'd have to use the zapper to 
shoot out the glass, get the pusher to shift the boulder out the 
way and the grabber to collect the gold. 

The level designs in the actual tower range from "Do with your eyes 
closed"-easy to "Throw the GP32 out of the window"-bloody hard. But 
the amount of thought that's gone into the design of the levels is 
fantastic. A great little bonus is a built-in level designer. 

To complicate matters even further there is the introduction of time 
sensitive puzzles. Most of the time you can just flick from control 
of one droid to the next, but a lot of the later puzzles demand for 
tasks to be completed simultaneously, and this is where you need to 
program the droids to run on auto pilot. Dead easy it is too! Just 
click on the "Program" button then enter in the button presses you'd 
use if you were in control. When you're ready just press the "Run" 
button. 

This painfully confusing review doesn't really do the game any 
justice. Which is probably why the game didn't do too well when 
released. After all, it just doesn't sound that exciting! But trust 
me. If you like to stretch your brain muscles and fancy something a 
little different, give Tower Of Babel a try. You might just like it!