I’m going to try and make this review as short as possible, because there really shouldn’t be all too much to talk about and the answer is plain out simple. So in brief, “this is a brief review”, well that definitely didn’t need to be written down. Alright, let’s stop stalling because today’s game is actually really good and does something a lot of modern day video games seem to struggle at. Come up with a unique innovative idea that elevates the creative thinking of shallow minded designers. Baba Is You, created by solo independent developer Arvi Teikari, is one of the most unique puzzle games I’ve played in a very long time. It certainly has gotten me to work my tiny little brain cells harder than ever, so much so that I can hear static playing in my head while everything else around me is tuned out. Which is what a good puzzle game should do!
How can such a goofy concept and title for a puzzle game come into existence anyways? Teikari, who was once a student attending The University of Helsinki and previously worked on a small indie metroidvania named Environmental Station Alpha, dreamt of a game where you could manipulate the rules and mechanics of the world. He took note of other famous puzzle games and claimed that what makes a well designed puzzle is how satisfying it is to solve. You want to make the thinking process and knowledge that leads up to the answer make the player feel clever. Especially if the solution was something the player wasn’t even expecting to work. Making a game where you can manipulate the mechanics would be difficult to comprehend as mechanics would pile up, but Teikari wanted it to be as simple as possible so that anybody could easily pick the game up. He had this idea which I like to call, “complexity from simplicity”, where a game has a simple looking format but slowly stacks on new ideas over time without becoming too overwhelming.
Teikari showed his new concept off during a GameJam back in 2017, and soon stretched it out into a full fledged game when overwhelmingly positive reception came back. It took months to complete since most of the puzzles were beatable within a minute once the solution was figured out, so he would need numerous well thought out puzzles otherwise levels to make a good ten to twenty hour long game. This then led to Baba Is You which was released during the first quarter of 2019 right between Devil May Cry 5 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Well that wasn’t a good idea, but this seems to be the case for a lot of indie games. Baba Is You was well received by critics and was even nominated for a couple of awards at the end of year for how unique of a game it was. After that everyone just kind of forgot the game existed, but here I come two years later to shed some light back onto this hibernating pig. I wasn’t planning to review this at all actually, but I want to get back to reviewing indie games and this was a good opportunity. Today we’ll be taking a brief, and remember that it’s going to be very brief, look as to why I quite enjoy Baba Is You and why it deserves your attention.
Story
Well. Sh*t. I’m starting to remember one of the few reasons why I didn’t want to write a review of Baba Is You. Since you’re already here I might as well make some stuff up to keep you entertained. Once upon a time there lived this weird bunny-cat like creature thing named Baba and he pranced around the colorful isle where all his friends lived. There was the no-arms, but extremely quick Keke. The ugly sister of Keke who constantly frowned named Me. And a bunch of random inanimate objects which occasionally came to life at times and freaked the rest of them the hell out. One day Keke decided to hold a big scavenger hunt for the rest of them. Whomever found the most flags would win the scavenger hunt and everyone would hold a big party for them. At first it was simple for Baba until he realized that the flags were out of reach or placed in spots his tiny little legs couldn’t navigate towards. Suddenly Baba realized life was being unfair to him, so he did what any of us would do during such a competition like this. Cheat. He prayed to god, and god used his magical wizard powers to allow Baba to change the rules of the world. Allowing Baba to take control of anything.
Baba soon realized that he had the ability to possess anything he could, so he decided to literally warp the fabrics of reality. He could do anything he ever wanted and…. this is already starting to sound stupider than it probably should be. Does this game really need a story? No, because it focuses heavily on the puzzles and each one is cleverly thought out. The thing is, I can forgive a game which lacks context but can make up for it with compelling design choices that go outside the box. That’s why my review of Risk of Rain 2 was harsh towards the context aspect, because the gameplay was fun but there weren’t really that many amazing ideas on display and it didn’t make up for what could have been done in place. I should really be getting towards the most important part of Baba Is You which are the puzzles.
Gameplay
Baba Is You places you, the player, into this small easy to navigate overworld with different worlds to choose from. Within these worlds are several levels which can be progressed through in a normal expected fashion. The goal is to beat levels, earn dandelions, and open up a colossal level which gives you one of the many endings of the game. However, knowing most players, they are just going to play this game casually for fun which is what I did. The so-called endings are just there to show you some of the silliness Baba Is You and the rules of the world has to offer.
You choose a level and from there the real game begins. Most of the time you’ll control the cute little creature that is Baba. You move around using the left joystick or d-pad and all other buttons don’t really serve a purpose. All they do is make your surroundings move forward without having to move Baba, reset a level if you think you messed up and want to restart, or undo the actions you made step by step if you think you don’t need to restart the level entirely. There will be tons of objects and blocks littered onto the screen, and text will display the rules of the level. BABA is the creature YOU control, and let’s say FLAG is the object you must touch to WIN. Touch the FLAG and you WIN by completing the level. There will be obstacles that stand in the way of your goal. There may be a solid WALL that STOPS the player, or ROCK that can be PUSHED out of the way. Why am I capitalizing these words? Well, what makes Baba Is You unique is that these words can be rearranged to form different rules within the level, because your goal will be out of reach. Sometimes you’ll have to rearrange the rules to get to your goal easier, and other times you’ll have to make your goal an entirely new thing. The first few levels do a great job at showing you this. The FLAG will be surrounded by WATER which makes you SINK. The two ROCKS within the level can be PUSHED into the WATER to make them disappear, but there may be so much WATER that you can’t actually reach the flag. Luckily you have access to some of the text blocks. One of the many rules you can make is, ROCK IS WIN. So you do that, touch the rock, and you win like you normally would by touching the flag. Here’s a few more examples. Maybe that wall is stopping you, so remove the STOP block from WALL and you can walk straight through the wall. Baba may be blocked off from his goal, but the rock can be close to it. Make ROCK IS YOU and now you get to control the rock and reach your goal. These are examples from the first few levels of Baba Is You.
Later worlds will introduce new rules and properties to be added into the mix, and as more mechanics are introduced the more Baba Is You transforms from a simple set of gears game to a complex system of mechanisms that was put together by a man who was trying too hard. You’ll have the TELEPORT rule which makes it so that the same object will transport an object to the other one if they make contact. You’ll have the MOVE rule which makes it so that when you move the specific object the rule is attached to moves as well. You’ll have the HOT and MELT rule, or the OPEN and SHUT rule which are often puzzles where you must bring one object like a key to the other object like a door. There’s the NOT rule which may cancel a rule a set of text may set up. There’s so many rules in Baba Is You that it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Collect enough dandelions, open up new levels, and reach one of the ending levels. Baba Is You is such a complex yet simple game and it’s easy to lose track of time when you are busy solving puzzle after puzzle. There’s even occasionally challenge levels which are kinda levels you played before, but they have been changed in a way so you don’t rely on the same solution before and now must find another one. There really isn’t much else I have left to say, but why bother explaining when it’s a simple yet complex puzzle game. Hopefully you can collect those dandelions and help Baba reach his goal. Wow, that did not sound as exciting as it usually does.
Thoughts
Baba Is You is a pretty good puzzle game and I really want you to check it out just to see the design choices and ideas on display. Anyone can pick up this game, even people who don’t regularly play video games and just want some slow casual fun. I do want to clarify that this ending section is going to be more of an impression, because there is a reason this isn’t a full scale review. Here’s what I thought.
I like how the game went for simplistic pixel art with cute characters and objects, because remember that the focus is on the puzzles not how pretty the game looks or whether it even has a story to begin with. I like how there are the movement buttons, the undo buttons, and the restart button. It didn’t need anything extra or more because if there were too many buttons or actions then playing Baba Is You would have gotten very confusing. The overworld is easy to navigate and the game makes it extremely easy to tell what areas you have and have not completed. The music isn’t all that great, but it’s the nice peacefulness needed to keep you calm and at ease during a puzzle. It helps get your thought process going. The main joy of this game are the puzzles of course and they are all very brilliant. Making you analyze the rules on hand and figuring out what you can and cannot do. Baba Is You doesn’t give you many tools, but it is a creative game. You’re shifting around text blocks and seeing if the rules work. Solving the numerous puzzles in Baba Is You definitely makes you feel clever, because the solution may take longer to find than you think and once you do find the answer it feels satisfying. The solutions can get crazy themselves and when you encounter those challenge levels similar to the ones before they get that thought working again like when it was working during the beginning of the last puzzle. Baba Is You has a handful of levels to go through and beating the game can take quite some time.
Baba Is You is a good game and you can tell that by now, but here’s the thing I need to get off of my chest. I haven’t actually one hundred percent the game yet or beat every puzzle the game had to offer. It’s not that the game got boring or there were so many levels that I got frustrated. It’s that I didn’t have the motivation or drive to complete Baba Is You compared to all of the other indie puzzle games I have played in the past. Return of The Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, and The Sexy Brutale are all fantastic puzzle games that I scoured inside and out of. I had the drive to find everything these games had to offer and it felt like I was getting somewhere. Baba Is You really doesn’t offer that same feeling, and it does get boring after a while. Eventually you’ll just run straight into a brick wall. You keep swapping out rules and try to find what may work, but you have this idea that it’s both too complex and too simple at the same time. You may just be one of those individuals who just searches up the answer online and that does remove the self satisfaction these types of games give you. Not everyone is going to do that, but some of you may. Plus Baba Is You still struggles from that problem all puzzle games suffer from including the other three I just mentioned. It’s that once you complete a puzzle there isn’t much of a reason to go back and replay it. You know what the answer is and you won’t get that satisfaction the second time because the satisfaction earned only works when it was discovered.
Despite what seems like major complaints, Baba Is You is a great game and I do recommend it. There’s a bunch of other features that were added overtime that make me appreciate it even more. Like the game was originally made using the english language, but they added in multiple language options overtime so that anyone can understand the jumbles of text on screen. They recently added in a level editor which allows players to take the rules and objects the game has and create their own unique levels with them. Now people can create levels harder than in game ones. It’s sorta like Super Mario Maker where the creation engine is the playground not the level you go through. The game goes for around fifthteen dollars which is a fair price for the content available. Baba Is You is good and I really hope this review did a decent job to show why I like this game. In the end I am going to Baba Is You a n 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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