Baba Is A truly scandinavian experience. A cozy game on the surface, with soft visuals and rubbery sound reminiscent of the Mumins. The abstract level scenarios hint at the simple, natural pleasures in life - rivers and sea, windswept valleys and forests full of flowers, quiet playtime with friends. Sometimes they branch out into edgier territory, but remain innocent by coming across as Super Mario references - volcanoes, outer space or mountaneering.

But that surface is skin deep. It doesn't take long for one's interactions with the game to bring about senses of identity disorder and nihilism. From the low hum one hears when nothing on a level IS YOU, to how almost no object has inherent properties. The cold and unflinching λόγος of this world, only a fraction of which the player has control over, the way the game begins and ends... If Sören Kierkegaard saw this shit, he'd probably ask to tone it down a peg.

I love this game. It captured my heart instantly and proceeded to melt my mind during those lonely quarantine nights. I don't want to describe any of its mechanics, because discovering and understanding them is a part of gameplay. But the rabbithole to descend into here is very well lubed. Each verb gets a bunch of levels dedicated to it, slowly ratcheting up the complexity of required solutions. It all culminates in the endgame, which provides one of the best hidden and most satisfying secrets you can find in games.

At time of writing I have completed every level in the base game, but since then Hempuli the Legend has provided a whole new level pack called New Adventures, which I've only nibbled at a little. I don't like all of it, 3D gimmick didn't do it for me, neither did the arcade recreations, but they're free and in the spirit of this game's gonzo creativity. There's also a level editor which I really want to dig into and test out my ideas, so I'm never going to be done with this game.

The success on display here is simply inspirational. The idea that this can be what you do to provide for yourself makes my jaded tear ducts unclog. Maybe one day I can make it too.

A classic, cutesy, programming-inspired, puzzle game made in a game jam? Count me the fuck in!

This game has no bombastic gameplay nor grandiose graphics or music. It's simple premise may even, in the very beginning, trick some people into thinking it's going to be a simple relaxing puzzle game to vibe to. These people could not be more wrong. This stress inducing game uses every single interaction to build up the next, every new little block added, every detail changed, even in similar looking stages, demand from the player that ever needed shift in perspective to see the often unintuitive solutions that those pieces offer to every problem posed.

The game never underestimates you and it has it's own "thinking with portals" way of teaching you the different interactions between the many ways you can alter the game state.

It does get to the point of showing how ridiculously complex those interactions can get once or twice where it might even be a little too much (If you know THAT level, you know what i'm talking about) but it prefers most of the time to ask you to think about pieces interacting and perspective shifts instead of being a game about trying every possible option until something magically works for some unknown reason or knowing what you have to do but still having to memorize the 347 (made up number) steps it takes to finish the level in one specific way (Seriously Arvi? WHAT THE FUCK?! and that solution is REQUIRED??¿)

5/5 tho, would play it again.

30+ minutes of staring at the screen in profound puzzlement
...and then...
1 minute of executing the wackiest setup to solve the stage with a wicked smile on your face

this is probably one of the hardest puzzle games I've played, but damn is it both rewarding and rich in design. i would say a must for puzzle game enjoyers.