Baba Is You

GAME
IS
UNIQUE
AND
FUN


HAS






PUZZLE
GET
HARD

Baba Is You is a sokoban-style game with a programming twist. Got tired of it and put it down in 46.4 hours, after doing 190+ levels and clearing most of the world map. Without looking up hints/guides, expect to spend 100+ hours of frustration. Used a keyboard to play. Difficulty is brutally hard.
It's ingenuitive, creative, and a delight to play. Baba Is You deserves the praise it gets, the overwhelmingly positive reputation, as well as the notoriety of being an extraordinarily challenging puzzle game.
The object of the game is to push blocks around until you reach a flag. Except blocks have words on them, and the words, when lined up in any certain order, will change objects, Baba, You, or the entire level, itself. This requires thinking far outside the box and a lot of messing around to win each level.
There is no easy solution.
Nothing is straightforward.
And each level changes things up. The walls are now hedges, that are now lava, You're not Baba, you're not even a character. You have to keep an eye on the 'rules' at play each time to keep your mind in the loop. So you're not just up against getting Baba to the flag each time, you also have to figure out what group of words/boxes to spell out to alter the level to get the win. And yes, it is as complicated as it sounds.
Baba is You starts off easy and then 10% in transcends into the chaos of a sharp and spiky difficulty curve. Like a mother gently leading their child into the world to then toss them off the edge of a cliff. When you beat levels, it opens more levels and lands, just enough that you know multiple areas exist and you can access them if only you solve X. Except then X is unsolvable. Every X in your way is a brick wall to green beyond. This is mostly due to the answers to those levels being convoluted or a case of 'you have to figure out what exactly the developer wants you to do'.
Ended up breaking down and looking at a guide for hints, because the levels at this point were too hard or obscure. Lots of "WTF am I supposed to be doing?" and "WTF does this block even mean?" with 0 explanation or lead-up.
I think here is where a lot of people put the game down, because less than 5% of people who buy Baba is you actually beat all the levels in the areas (so says the achievements). I have a feeling the % of people who 100% the game are very few, and the case of people doing it without looking at guides is next to nil. For that express purpose:
*If you get tired of the game at any time, a level opens up on the world map partway in that, if you beat it, you will 'win the game' in a way you do not have to beat everything.*
Once you cheat or spend a LOT of time thinking your way through the first wall, the rest of the game plays out pretty hit or miss on difficulty. On average, I was able to beat 65-70% of the levels through time and thinkybits power, 20ish% I looked up hints, and the rest involved getting so stuck that I had to look up step-by-step walkthroughs to either push myself in the right direction or show me how it's solved.
The best way to enjoy this game and get far without throwing hundreds of hours at it: Give yourself a time limit on each level. If you're still hardcore stuck after, say, 1 hour, look up a hint guide. If you're still stuck after hints, look up one or two moves ahead to see if you're heading in the right direction or what you need to do next, then try again. And if you haven't gotten anywhere with that, cheat the rest of the way and move on to the next puzzle. In this way, I found that I could both keep a pace and appreciate what the developer did without slogging or losing patience with the game as a whole.
Speaking of, where I eventually lost interest came in the sheer number of levels and 'hidden levels'. Baba Is You needs a trimming. There are too many levels and - with the amount of brain power involved and wits needed - it drains on you. That and the erratically spaced difficulty are it's two big flaws. I cleared the map, cleared the areas on the map, found a hidden area, then another hidden area, then found there were at least 20 hidden levels everywhere, and my will to play fell apart. Maybe if I come back to it in the future on a 100% achievement run with new grit I'll be able to do it all. Until then I'm happy with what I've played and am ok with setting it down for other games.

GAME IS GOOD
BABA IS CUTE
ME IS DUMB
BRAIN IS HURT

I thought I was good at puzzle games.
And then BaBa came around and crushed my soul into tiny little bits.
In its unassuming form with its cutesy exterior it lulled me into a false sense of security.
And you just know that as you are sitting there stumped for hours trying to crack a seemingly simple puzzle and the kindergarden aesthetic and toddler speak chip away at both your confidence and your remaining braincells, somewhere out there, a game developer is smugly smiling to themself knowing fully well what they have inflicted upon their fellow men.

Incredible puzzle game that makes you feel like the smartest person in the world until it gets hard, and you realise you're actually the dumbest.
10/10 would recommend to anyone smarter then me.

BABA Is YOU

GAME is GOOD
is
not
FOR ME


Baba is You is a great puzzle game that taught me that I don't really like puzzle games. I'm not sure I'd say I really enjoyed the game as a whole, but I am fully aware that that is not the game's fault. The game is an incredible example of how simple mechanics can come together in brain-breaking ways - it's like the ULTRAKILL of Puzzle Games (or maybe ULTRAKILL is the Baba is You of shooters) in the way that a few building blocks create a complex web of interactions that powers the gameplay.

PROS:
+ Challenging puzzle gameplay is elegant and well-executed
+ Game's aesthetics are simple yet charming
+ Lots of puzzles - no shortage of content
+ Non-linear level structure helps reduce sticking points

CONS:
- Not anything, really.

The game is incredibly good at what it wants to be as a puzzle game, but if you don't like puzzle games it's not going to give you anything else to work with. I don't really like the feeling of getting stuck, especially since I really prefer to focus on playing one game at a time (so getting stuck can feel like a blocker) but for those who do like the satisfaction of overcoming really tricky puzzles this game is great.

Even though it didn't grab me in the same ways that a lot of my favorite games did, I will still probably return to the game to knock out some of the later levels anyways. Very good at what it wants to do, just make sure you actually want a puzzle game before you buy.

Me, after finishing each of the first few worlds: surely this can't get any worse than this (clueless)
The puzzles in Baba are really hard. But they're also super creative and enjoyable. The set of rules may seem simple, but the puzzles really explore them in depth, and come up with lots of mind bending scenarios and interactions.
It's especially cool how Baba takes some mechanics that might be considered a bug in other games, and fully embraces them, creating unique challenging puzzles and even sections of the world around them.