LogFAQs > #933121856

#15





Years of release: 2017 (Game Jam demo), 2019 (PC, Switch)
Beaten?: Yes, almost 100% but not quite

I don't remember exactly how I came upon Baba Is You, but at one point or another it became the flavor of the month sometime around the beginning of the year, and I decided I would play the less polished demo version of the game to get a feel for it. Despite the fact that the visuals and music were all hastily put-together things for a game jam, the game concept was completely riveting and immediately catapulted itself into being one of the most interesting puzzle games I've ever played. I knew I had to play the full thing right away, and I did.

Baba Is You is a block-pushing puzzle game, but with a twist, the best twist the Sokoban genre of games has ever seen - every rule that governs how objects in the world work are ALSO blocks that can be pushed, and by pushing them, you change how everything operates - walls no longer stop you, objects become pushable or not pushable, and you can potentially control any object on the screen, including the walls themselves. Soon, you realize that objects themselves have no intrinsic meaning, only the logic that the game grants to them, and the ability to change this logic allows you to manipulate them as you please.

Well, to an extent. Because, of course, this is a puzzle game, and if you could do anything you want, it wouldn't be much of a puzzle. This game's puzzles are so intelligently designed that the game always feels challenging, but never feels too fully frustrating, except for a few of the game's more arduous puzzles. The solutions always feel like they're just in your grasp - there are only ever so many ways that you can manipulate the level's logic, and trying new things results in different interactions, and experimenting with what things you are allowed to change reveals the path forward if you spend enough time with it and spend enough time thinking about how you can use the tools given to you to move forward and achieve your goal. It's a difficult game, but far from one of the most difficult puzzle games I've ever played - it's no Snakebird, or Stephen's Sausage Roll, or something truly miserably difficult along those lines. Baba Is You starts off nice and simple and gradually works its way to being difficult, before still gradually working its way up to being truly nasty, and then when you think you've understood all there is to understand, there is so much more yet to learn. It's really surprising and impressive just how far this game takes its own concept to the max. And yet, all the way, aside from a couple of puzzle solutions that I admit I did have to look up, I always felt like the puzzles were manageable, within my reach. Just as long as I kept trying new things, and never repeating old ideas that didn't work, and eliminating seemingly dead possibilities until only one remained, I could always figure out the answer - and the answers themselves always felt like rewards, these grand moments of realization in which I realize a way that I could have used the tools given to me. Playing around with the logic of the game makes the answer to each puzzle seem not like a solution, but a REVELATION. These, to me, are always the best sorts of puzzle games.

I really love the art style and music in this game, too. The soundtrack is really chill but surprisingly catchy, and I find myself humming its abstract and discordant little tunes surprisingly often - they're a really nice backdrop to this game when you're thinking for a long time. And Baba is just so damn cute. I don't know what he is. Is he a sheep, because he's called Baba? Some kind of rabbit? Some kind of... weird gremlin? I don't know. I love Baba. I am glad that he is me. (Not to be confused with Me, who is not Baba.)

But I really keep coming back for the puzzles. I'm even replaying the game right now, because it's been long enough that many of the solutions to the puzzles I've forgotten by now, and even having more expertise in understanding the game's puzzle 'language', so to speak, I still continually find the puzzles challenging. And there's quite a few that I still haven't cleared yet. I did look up a couple of answers just because I wanted to progress through the game and unlock stuff, but I'm satisfied with leaving some puzzles uncleared to gradually work my way through, because nothing's more satisfying than having spent several hours over weeks or months solving a puzzle to finally stumble upon the answer and have it seemed so simple all along.