Welcome to the official discussion thread for Baba Is You on the Switch!
To start, please add this game to your log, add it to your collection (if applicable), and (when you are ready) rate it using the link above!
What a fun little game! Its core mechanic tickles my programmer fancy while being simple enough for anyone to pick up, the presentation has a cute stripped-down indie feeling but doesn't go weirdly overboard with it, and the developer even took the Giving What We Can pledge! Really enjoying this so far, very hard to put down.
Dang it, I’ve been buying waaaaay too many eShop games lately, but this seems fascinating, I remember flipping through the screenshots on the eShop, but didn’t watch the video, for whatever reason. I’m glad I did now. I guess I’m getting another game. Thanks, S_T!
One of my favorite developers tweeted that the coolest thing he's seen in Baba Is You so far comes 20 hours in. Sounds like this one is meaty! It gives me Stephen's Sausage Roll vibes; looks simple, but takes its mechanics way further than you'd expect.
Yes this game is great. I am about 5ish hours in so far, and am enjoying it quite a bit. I sometimes question how the rules work, but I eventually get to a solution. I think I have a looong way to go, though. I'll keep chipping at it bit by bit.
But holy cow... does it get hard fast, or am I just stupid? I guess I'm still trying to figure out what the rules even ARE, though I get the sense that this is the type of game where a bunch of the puzzles are specifically ABOUT how there are no clear rules and some of the cleverness will come from thinking outside of the box?
But yeah I already keep getting stuck a lot and I barely started!
It's definitely hard, there are a handful of levels that I've come back to probably five times in the past few weeks and still have no idea how they'd even be possible. Most of the solutions are pretty clearly based around some specific interaction or mechanism though, there might be a couple of levels where you can "make your own solution" but for the most part the dev seems to have thought of everything and designed the levels with interesting constraints that funnel you into a predetermined thought process.
@Hero_Of_Hyrule I agree with you about the rules not being clear, and I would one-up you and say some of the games behaviors are downright inconsistent and contrary to common sense/reasoning.
For example If you move the Baba in “Baba is you” then the sentence breaks and Baba is no longer you. Make sense in a programming way, if you rewrite the code then something changes.
BUT! I was just stuck for like an hour on a puzzle that igngored that rule. You had to do something like “rock is key” and then rely on the fact that the rock would remain a key even after your broke the sentence up. It was really confusing and contrary to everything the game had taught me before. It’s a great game, but it’s sloppy and undisciplined. You can kinda tell it’s someone’s first game.
I'm 35 hours in and loving it, the game just keeps getting crazier and crazier. But @Hero_Of_Hyrule, I still haven't solved Skull House. It's one of about ten puzzles that just has me totally stumped. I've beaten a few of the stumpers though, so it's possible! You really do have to think outside the box though, I always try to figure out what each level is "about" before bruteforcing solutions, because you're right, most of the solutions usually involve some new consequence that emerges from combining disparate elements for the first time.
Why would the key have turned back into a rock? If there's no rule that says "key is rock" then the key will just sit there. The fact that it was once a rock has no bearing on the ruleset it's following now.
@Secret_Tunnel I didn’t make the game! I don’t know why it does what it does! I just know you can’t count on rules carrying over from level to level. The underlying mechanics of the game change to suit the idea of the puzzle. Which make it really fun and unpredictable in some ways, but also really frustrating!
@deathly_hallows@Secret_Tunnel I guess what he is saying is if "rock is key" turns a rock into a key, and then you can break things up and it is still a key, then if "baba is you" turns a baba into you, then you break it up and why isn't baba still you???
I don't know if it is inconsistent per se, since one of those turns something into something else, while the other just connects something to the property of being you, but it's a bit of an odd way to think about things, since "you" is not really something we would generally think of as a property per se.
If you think of it in that way it can seem inconsistent, but it's pretty easy to keep straight: the blocky words are properties, and words with no block around them are nouns (or words like "is" which connect other words).
@Zero I mean they’re might be some “fair and balanced” universal logic that governs it all underneath, but if so I don’t think the game teaches it well. It seems less clever and more obtuse if that makes any sense. I would prefer the challenge arise from really intricate puzzles and less from “haha there is this thing you can do you didn’t know you could do because we never told you hahaha... idiot.”
@Secret_Tunnel Isn’t being a rock a property of something? I mean I literally don’t know! Would it ruin the game if they just told you the difference? That’s what I meant by the game seeming a bit amateur. If it was confinent in it’s design then couldn’t it just teach you the rules and still have good/hard puzzles?
You actually do get into some puzzles pretty quick where you encounter phrases like (very mild spoilers?) "rock is rock" where, yes, being a rock is a property of rocks, meaning that if you create the phrase "rock is key" afterwards, that text's effect will be nullified since those two rules are inconsistent.
I didn't highlight your spoiler, but you bringing up that level in the context of this discussion gave me enough of a hint to figure out what I had to do, haha. And I think it's brilliant! What an awesome puzzle, I can't believe I hadn't seen that effect in my other 35 hours of playtime.
...but you're right, I'm not totally sure why it worked in that specific situation when it doesn't appear to in others. I guess "rock is rock" is a special case that nullifies other "rock is *noun*" rules due to being an infinite loop? Interesting. One thing that I haven't fully deciphered yet is exactly what order certain rules and actions are executed, and I feel like this ties into that.
