Every once in awhile, it’s fun to break the rules. Some games allow you to break the rules by inputting a cheat code, finding a well-hidden Easter egg or for those of us truly nefarious, use a Game Genie or similar hacking device to break a game wide open.
However, what if the game by design was made in a way where you are encouraged to break the rules on purpose and allow you to alter the underlying rules of the game? You would get 2019’s Video Game of the Year, Baba is You.
Similar to games like Boxxle or Sokoban where you controlled a person pushing around boxes and placing them onto predefined spots, Baba is You relies on a similar mechanic. Instead of pushing around boxes, you push around tiles with words written on them. For example, you have three tiles together, one of them reads “ROCK”, another one reads “IS”, and the last one reads “PUSH”, creating the simple sentence ROCK IS PUSH. As you control the title character (a white critter named BABA), you can move the tiles themselves. Rocks that normally can be pushed become rocks you can pass over with immunity by breaking the sentence ROCK IS PUSH by moving the tile “ROCK” away from the rest of the sentence. Another example is the sentence WALL IS STOP. Normally, contact with a wall would prevent your progress, but by breaking that sentence, you can make it so you are no longer stopped by any wall. This is just the beginning.
As you go further through the game, you will see more words added, everything from basic objects such as WATER, LAVA, FENCE, SKULL, FLAG to more words such as DEFEAT, WEAK, WIN, MOVE, OPEN and a lot more. Objects don’t have an intrinsic value, so the expectation is to use the rules in place, break the underlying logic of each level and come up with a solution to the staggering two-hundred plus levels in the game.
The game exudes a very charming graphical style, with words and objects wobbling and minimal background elements (which is good, the last thing you want in a crunchy puzzle game is a lack of visual clarity). The music is whimsical, instantly memorable and sound effects are there but not overly so.
Baba is You is one of the best puzzle games I’ve played in years. It is the most original game I’ve played in years, and that includes games that are not puzzle games. It is accessible, brilliant, and guaranteed it will cause your lateral thinking brain to burn to the point where the embers of the game still smoke in the back of your mind long after you stopped playing the game and then as soon as you’ve put the controller down – you want to play it again.
This review is based on the PC version of the game purchased by the author of this review through Steam. The game is also available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
Written by Chris Murdock
