Baba Is You (2019)

The past few years Ive had a tradition of starting a puzzle(ish) game on my steam deck during my family holiday visits.

2022 - Return of the Obra Dinn

2023 - Tunic

2024 - Dredge (Not really a puzzle game but oh well)

This year I've decided to go with Baba Is You. It seemed like it'd suit the Deck's form factor pretty well so I'm excited to give it a shot later tonight!

I'm back to chipping away at Baba after almost a year of barely playing. I was surprised that I picked it right back up with very little hesitation and have completed ~15 puzzles in the 3 hours I've put in this week, putting my total completed puzzles to 120. I'm glad there's so many available so when I get stuck I can just hop onto something else and let my brain do it's thing in the background. I have 3 or 4 that I wasn't able to solve 'quickly' bouncing around in my head right now. That said, I can't believe I'm at 20 hours (in game, who knows how much out of game lol) and still have nearly half the game left, presumably of harder puzzles. It may take another year, but I'm still planning on making it through with no outside assistance.

Also, I accidentally did a thing that allowed me to access some of the weirder, more meta-aspects of the game. Very cool. I'm not sure whether to be happy that I accidentally found it or sad that I didn't do it on purpose.

im playing this game. its really good. i like the way that the world is arranged, like sometimes i'll encounter a puzzle and just looking at it turns my brain into mush, but the game gets it... you can come back to it and sometimes you'll think 'ah of course' and sometimes you'll still think 'no' and the game doesnt judge you. i guess im working on the fifth world.

ill say this i'll be shocked if i make it through this game by the end of this year. i feel msyelf coming to the limits of my mind. i imagine i will stop playing this game on thursday and pick it up in two weeks and get stuck on the exact same puzzle and in three months i'll solve that puzzle and two more and then put it down for another three years and then maybe do two more puzzles and then maybe on a bus ride in 2027 when the switch is now an old enough device that i dont fear it getting stolen on public transit, i'll flip through my games and see that title and kind of smile to myself and load it up one last time and give up within 20 minutes of launching it.

5 stages of Baba Grief

• Denial- "This level is broken. There is no way to beat it!"
• Anger- "Who even likes this dumb game? It is a fart game for idiots!"
• Bargaining- "Baba, I'll give you all my little flower thingies if you'll just finish the level. Please, I don't know what else to do."
• Despair- "No one on Grouvee will ever respect me because I can't beat the trending puzzle game. I should just go back to playing Pokemon Quest."
• Acceptance- "Hey, I did it!"

Pretty mixed on this. On one hand, I love the premise. It's almost like you're coding to solve puzzles. The game does a great job at explaining its grammar, and is at its best when it focuses on letting the player experiment with rearranging words and seeing what happens.

But I hit a point early on where I just could no longer do any puzzle without a guide. I was trying to figure out why I felt like it spiked up so suddenly when it was doing a great job at teaching me the grammar. I think the issue is that the game becomes heavily about spatial reasoning out of nowhere and stops being about forming commands. So many puzzles end up coming down to "the command needs to be formed in this specific spot" and I feel like that adds an unnecessary layer. Every puzzle becomes 2 puzzles, which gets really difficult to manage. Just wish it focused more on the word playground aspect of it.