Baba will break your brain

I love puzzle games. I never really played video games much, but the games I did happen to like were almost all puzzle games (with perhaps the exception of Minecraft and Geometry Dash). But Baba Is You, an indie game developed by Arvi Teikari (Hempuli), was the first game that really blew my mind in terms of how far it was possible for a game to go.

This trailer illustrates the sheer insanity of Baba Is You in a way that I never could. Please watch it. I’ll wait here.

Let’s take some standard puzzle-type games: jigsaw puzzles, sudokus, crosswords, maybe Tetris? if that counts. These games are fun in part because they require focus and logic to progress, and oftentimes many disparate parts of the puzzle come together satisfyingly. However, I’d argue that you eventually get diminishing returns with these games, since the underlying mechanic stays the same throughout the game, and you become accustomed to using similar strategies to solve each new puzzle. There is always more depth of strategy to be found, of course: just watch the replays of any advanced Tetris player (e.g.). I would be hard-pressed to say that I understand anything going on there. But my point is that Baba Is You turns the entire paradigm of puzzle game on its head.

You see, Baba Is You is a game about manipulating the game mechanics themselves.

baba-level-0

You are this fluffy white character named Baba, and your objective is to get to the shiny yellow flag on the right. You can push around the rocks. Seems pretty natural, given the rules of the game written on the screen. But those rules are far from permanent.

baba-level-2

What.

I’m sure you can infer that you are the wall now and that flags are now your primary obstacle. How do you get past the flags? Well, the words are right there. You could just walk over to them and…nudge them a little bit.

baba-level-2-again

That’s better.

And this is barely the beginning. You might understand what’s going on right now, but Arvi has a way of finding endless interesting tricks even with rules as seemingly straightforward as Push and Stop. One single word can have so many different effects, and it’s up to you to puzzle through it all and figure them out. I display a level here (Solitary Isle-Extra 5) for effect, but good luck. This level is notorious.

Spoiler

(It doesn't explicitly have to do with the Stop rule; it's more about the mechanics of Push, which is implicit since Text is always Push by default.)

baba-level-2-e5

The main game itself is over 200 levels long, and many more have been added recently in levelpacks. As you progress through the levels, you encounter new mechanics, such as Sink, Move, Shift, Fall, etc. But this only happens every so often; much more important is finding all the ridiculous ways to use and exploit them. It’s hard to stress how mind-boggling the game gets, aside from saying that I’ve spent over two hours on a single level. Multiple times.

The thing is, the game is incredibly rewarding. When you discover a new trick, you feel the awe of discovering something new, and you feel so proud of yourself. And the game never stops giving. Honestly, I don’t think I’m doing the game justice in trying to convey why it’s so cool. I encourage you to buy the game (not sponsored). It’s $15 but has given me over 90 hours of fun and counting.