The pen that rewrites the past aboard a ship that burns memories

It looks like a world of cause and effect bent to your will, but it runs on rails — and the reputation behind this piece comes from Steam, not from the store giving the game away.

A ship that runs on the memories of everyone who boards it

The crew of the ship Babel tears the memories out of every passenger and burns them as fuel, then fires the person toward a new life out of a cloud cannon. Against all that, the player has just one thing: a pen that can rewrite the past.

That is how A Guidebook of Babel works, an adventure puzzler powered by the butterfly effect. You reopen an event you have already lived through, change one detail with the pen, and watch the change ripple instantly through everything around it; when the threads tangle, a notebook gathers the clues you have collected and lays out the chain of events. The setting runs from the soaked deck to the Memory Factory, with odd creatures along the way — from Crab Eggs to beings that double as transport; one player, fifteen hours in, likened the world to Alice in Wonderland.

Released on August 2, 2023 by the studio StarryStarry, with distribution by Thermite Games, it is a single-player indie adventure game. Off sale it costs R$46.99 on Steam (US$4.99); right now it is being given away for free on the Epic store for mobile, with the window open until August 13.

Six “lowest prices ever” in barely over a year — and now, zero

The oddity is not in the game itself but on the price tag. Since the middle of 2025, with every big Steam sale the studio StarryStarry announced a new record low. There was 50% off in the summer sale of June 2025 (US$7.49), 55% in the fall, 60% in the winter sale in December (US$5.99), 65% for the Chinese New Year in February 2026 (US$5.25), 65% again in the spring in March (US$5.24), and 70% in June 2026 (US$4.49). Each announcement came wrapped in the same promise of an all-time lowest price.

There was only one possible next step on that staircase. After the whole string of discounts, the game now goes for zero — not in a Steam sale, but given away on the Epic store for mobile.

Pieces that click into place, and a sorrow hidden in the collectibles

The praise tends to be about the machinery. A Brazilian who spent two hours with the game, on June 22, describes the experience as more tactical — the logic puzzles — than strategic, and bets that fans of Ghost Trick, with its cause-and-effect mechanics, will feel at home; he preferred the system of rewriting the diary to the loose clue-gathering of the early chapters, and assures readers that you can play it with no background in heavy reasoning games.

Another player, fifteen hours in on August 1, came in expecting little and left won over by the multiple-viewpoint storytelling: you control both the one fleeing and the one chasing at the same time, and see how one act pushes the other. The top-down view drains some of the mystery, he says, but makes the interlocking gears plain to see.

What lingers tends to be the darkest part. A player who finished everything in twenty-eight hours, on July 21, came away marked by the story — hidden in the collectibles — of a mother and daughter pushed to the margins by a rumor and by class difference. Loosely put, what most moved a ten-hour player was the idea that, when death is already set to part two people, all you want is to walk one more stretch of the road beside the other.

A note on the source: the game is being given away on the Epic store for mobile, but its listing, screenshots and reviews come from its page on Steam — an audience from a different store. There it has 1,780 reviews, 91% positive: 1,612 against 168.

The complaint that keeps coming back: a corridor disguised as a maze

The most detailed negative review comes from a Brazilian with 33 hours, dated April 21, who opens by saying it is perhaps his saddest negative one. He praises the visuals and the soundtrack and thinks it unfair to call the story silly; even so, he does not recommend it. His reason, in his own words: “The game moves very slowly, almost grinding to a halt.” Obvious solutions only unlock once the plot reaches a certain point, and, many stages later, the player no longer remembers what was left behind — because the game never let him go back there.

The same feeling shows up even among those who liked it. The fifteen-hour player realized, halfway through, that the world of cause and effect is, at bottom, a straight line: the clues turn up more by trial and error, trying everything, than by deduction, and that takes some of the fun out of it. A Japanese player with nine hours complains of a story with no peaks and of a translation that gets in the way of settling into the mood, and points to the achievement numbers as a gauge of that barrier: 63% of players unlock the first, 45% the second, and only 20% reach the end.

There is also a warning about the tone. A ten-hour player, on July 22, cautions that beneath the cute art style the script hides a heavy subject — women driven into prostitution by poverty — planted deep in the background and visible only to those who pick up the relics. Anyone drawn in by the artwork, he says, may be caught off guard; even so, he recommended the game.

Where it clicks and where many people drop it

It will click for anyone who enjoys watching a chain of cause and effect close up piece by piece, doesn't mind moving along a set track, and is willing to comb through the collectibles for the emotional weight the game saves for the end. Anyone who played Ghost Trick for its cause-and-consequence logic tends to get along with it.

It will be dropped by anyone expecting real freedom to deduce: the butterfly effect is guided, progress stays tied to the story, and whoever tries to reason on their own runs into a wall. The turning point is clear — the moment you notice you are finding clues by trial rather than by reasoning is where the game shows itself for what it is, and where many people stop. Only 1 in 5 reaches the end.

It is free on the Epic store for mobile until August 13; anywhere else, it costs R$46.99 on Steam. Worth remembering that everything known about its reception came from the computer version — about how it runs on mobile, the dossier says nothing.