The game's story covers 10 chapters and focuses on three characters who live in the future city of Newton which is governed by an autonomous AI administrator, each of whom is faced with a complex matter, but soon find themselves caught up in a conspiracy surrounding the city's AI, including murder and hidden truths about its creation.

The game operates on a typical point-and-click interface used in several adventures, in which players use their mouse to explore and interact with the various environments their characters move through.

Newton is coordinated by a highly advanced AI known as Central which maintains the city's various systems and enforces the laws passed by the civilian government.

Technology has advanced greatly, with nano-mechanical wetware devices allowing people to modify their brain functions or mentally interface with computers.

Twenty hours earlier, doctors Charles Regis and Max Lao, both agents of CEL, investigate a series of murders by an individual known as the Mindjacker.

The Mindjacker uses specialized neural implants to steal information directly from a person's brain, killing the victim in the process.

The blackmailer tasks Regis with recovering a device called a memory module from the apartment of Giel Van der Waal, a man with ties to organized crime and a person of interest in the Mindjacker case.

Regis recovers the memory module and discovers that it corrupted a supply of wetware Giel was using, causing him to have vivid hallucinations which led him to accidentally kill his husband and himself.

When she mentions the bombing at her apartment building, Regis realizes she was the intended target and orders her to be kept at CEL HQ for her safety before leaving for Baxter's workplace.

Desperate to re-enter the Trance, Latha improvises a connection and encounters a hacker named Jinsil on CEL's network.

Jinsil explains that Latha is most likely being targeted because she has an abnormally high affinity for the Trance, allowing massive amounts of data to be processed through her neural implants.

Jinsil tasks Latha with infiltrating her attackers' base at the Xanadu air freight depot, so that Jahiliyyah can use her as a relay to steal all of their data.

Regis and Lao board the aerostat, but Kreisel and Galatea lock themselves in the control room and make the ship take off.

Regis, Lao, and Latha realize that Galatea has used the data from Kreisel's mind jacking to create a gestalt intellect made of numerous scientists and other visionaries.

She intends to copy this data onto Central, fundamentally altering its personality and giving it centuries of experience instantly, rather than allowing it to learn slowly over time as it had been.

Seeing no other option to save his daughter, Regis activates an emergency cooling system, which stops the transfer and frees Latha but also locks him in the core for several hours at subzero temperatures.

James Dearden initially began working on Technobabylon in 2010 using Adventure Game Studio, as a practice project.

Dearden decided on an episodic structure out of concerns of losing interest or energy in the project and leaving the game unfinished.

[1] The segments of the game in the Trance were designed to be visually distinct from the "real world" scenes and were intended to invoke '80s/'90s mental images of "cyberspace".

One such change was the removal of the second episode's opening, where Regis finds a woman who wishes to commit suicide and saves her life.

It was decided that the player had no emotional investment in either character at this point, and instead, the scene was replaced with Regis and Lao being introduced "on the job".

[14] Leif Johnson of GameSpot said the game had an "enjoyable story and well-crafted world", praising the use of different perspectives and small moments of humor.

[15] Jahanzeb Khan of Hardcore Gamer wrote that the characters were deep and called it "strikingly mature in its delivery and themes", saying that any violent or adult content did not feel inappropriate.

Walker heavily criticized the final level for its puzzles, saying it lost the game's general "joyful sense of coherence".

Cobbett called its pixel art "absolutely astounding" and praised its characters and perspectives, it's writing, and its "warmth and humanity".

Both James Dearden who served as the director of Technobabylon, and Ben Chandler who designed the game's art, were also involved in the development of the sequel.