January 5, 2025 3:07 PM
Baba Is You
I played Baba Is You for the first time a few years ago with Dan. He's really into The Witness and some people had recommended Baba Is You to him because it's also a fun puzzle game. I think I like puzzle games well enough. Unlike The Witness, I liked that the Baba Is You puzzles were just presented to you. I didn't have to go looking for them. The first several puzzles were easy enough and it was a nice, fun game, but it quickly got pretty hard. At some point, I think it was too much for Dan and he wanted to stop. But I didn't. I started a puzzle and I wanted to solve it.
I ended up buying Baba Is You for my own laptop, and then later I bought it again so I had something to play on my phone during plane rides.
_ _ | \ | \ __,....' \_' \_ .' _`. / _ (_) \ | (_) | ' ; \ / '. _ _____ _ .' / / | | | | \ \ ,,,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,
Just a warning that this is incredibly long (well, not as long as the last entry) and there are potential spoilers ahead, but please continue if you want to read about my journey
As I played the game, it just got harder and harder. I remember the first level I really got stuck on: "Tiny isle". Like got stuck on for days and days and I even asked my cousins to help me and they still couldn't solve it. I ended up reading some hints and then I accidentally read too many hints that basically gave away the answer and I couldn't believe how simple it was when I finally saw the solution.
That was so long ago. The (Baba) universe was such a simpler place back then.
__ ________ |__) /\ ___ __ |########| |__)/--\ | (__' |\ //\| || |__) /\ _|_ .__) | | \/:_;| |__)/--\ '########'
I also remember the first level that I solved on my own where it felt like I did something really crazy. I was sitting in the plane looking at "Further Fields" and I had the insight that I needed to temporarily have nothing "IS YOU" in order to solve it. The game even tries to mislead you by showing you the restart action once you've broken off YOU!
I ended up getting stuck again on the level after that one. In fact, I got stuck a lot. I would get stuck on a single puzzle for days, weeks, and even months. Eventually I stopped playing Baba Is You on the plane because it really was too much for my brain. Sure, I would pick it up every once in a while, maybe solve a level or two, but then I'd quickly get stuck again. I had this game on my phone for a year and a half and it felt like I only progressed ten levels during that time.
But then something happened a few months ago. I was sitting on the couch, staring at the level "Ruined Orchard" that I'd been stuck on for probably a month, and it just made me so tired that I fell asleep. When I woke up from my nap I had an epiphany and I knew how to solve the puzzle! Something must have happened in my brain. Levels were starting to feel easier. I would solve one level a day, then two, then I managed to solve six levels in one day! My brain was unlocked. It's like I finally understood Baba and could see all the different combinations.
||~--.,_,.*' || | || ; ||-+-.,_,.-' || || ====== FLAG is often (but not always!) WIN
(But I did not. Oh boy was there so much more to Baba that I was not ready for. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself)
I felt so smart when I was sitting in bed at 1am and I had the realization in "Out at Sea" that I needed to stack two words on top of each other so they both occupied the same square.
I was now determined to 100% this game without looking up any solutions or hints. I ended up flying through the last few maps of the main game. I was home for Thanksgiving when I reached the boss stage "A Way Out?" It was...fairly easy actually. There were multiple parts to it, but it all seemed so logical. And then when I was done, I saw the credits, and it was such a cute and wonderful way to end the game.
Except it wasn't the end. There were some extra things that I noticed in the last few levels that suggested there were even more levels, so I googled "how many levels in Baba is You" and it turned out there are 231 levels and I still had over 60 levels to solve 😱 It was like everything that I had done so far was just an introduction and this was where the real challenge started.
,--~~~~~- .'' _ `. | _ [_] | | [_] | | | | | | | | ,' \ ___ ' | |_ | |_ |___| |___| Sometimes, KEKE is YOU. And sometimes Keke moves around to help you. And sometimes Keke moves around and just gets in your way.
Remember how I said that the puzzles are just presented to you and you don't have to go looking for them? Oh how very wrong that was. Now solving levels was the easy part. Finding more levels was the hard part. Maps and levels were now morphed together which made simply navigating a struggle.
So the game got harder, but I was still slowly progressing. I made it through the ??? world and then I just hit a wall: "Crushers". A level that is trivially easy to "win" but incredibly hard to solve such that you actually progress in the game. I think I was stuck on this for two weeks, and I know I had been stuck on puzzles for months in the past, but I hadn't been staring at those levels every single day for hours each day. There's this website called Baba Is Hint, and I had been using that mostly to gauge how hard the levels were, but I almost never read the actual hints. This is what it had to say about Crushers:
This is the level where the boys become men. And where the girls become men. Everyone is a man now.
🤔
Fortunately, my cousin was visiting me for the weekend because he was attending our holiday DDR party. I had to show him this thing that had been driving me crazy, and now he was determined to solve it.
_~~~~~~~~~~__ ,-' `. ' | | _____ | | | | | ' `--_- | `._ /] ----. | |__| | ,' `-|__" The SKULL. The thing that I kept getting crushed by over and over in this level
I don't know how late in the night it was, but we had spent many hours on it that day, and it was truly a team effort. I found that there was a way to stack two words on top of each other (turns out late game Baba requires you to do this a lot) and then my cousin found out how to utilize that to make the words move automatically. I moved Keke around to form the rules, and the moment we saw two words move on their own we both started screaming from excitement.
For me, Crushers truly was the hardest part of the whole game. After that, it was a long and slow slog to the end. According to Baba Is Hint, the hardest level in the game is "The Return of Scenic Pond", and as far as winning levels I'd agree. I was pretty excited when I solved that one.
By the time it was New Year's day, I was so close to 100%-ing the whole game. I had 228 levels completed. I knew what level I had to work on next: "Booby Trap". This may be my least favorite level in the whole game simply because the game requires you to go back to it so many times. First you beat it, then you have to make LEVEL IS BABA, then you have to make LEVEL IS FLAG, then you have to make LEVEL IS TEXT, then you have to go and make LEVEL IS FLAG again, then apparently you have to make LEVEL IS FLAG and LEVEL IS TEXT simultaneously. By the time I was at this point, I was just so tired of this level. I had told myself "no hints" but I gave in because it's 2025 and I am NOT letting Baba interfere with my new year. I may have read too many hints because it kind of felt like I was practically being told the answer, but at this point I did not care. I had logged at least 146 hours on this game, and I was finally done with Baba Is You.
And honestly? The final ending is kind of lame compared to the main ending with the cute credits. And you also don't get anything special when you 100% the game. So it was a bit anti-climactic. But it's alright. What's important is that I'm done. And I think I'm good on puzzle games for the next five years.
Z __ /_ ___ BABA IS SLEEP / /__ /\,.---~~~~~~~~~~---. / /\ `. / / \ ` |._, ` [ `~' | ___' |_ (____.. __) ___`> /____ (____,~~~~~~~~----~~~~~~~~._____)