I think puzzle games are uniquely positioned to be precisely 'perfect' in a design sense. If a puzzle is tightly and thoroughly designed, information is clearly communicated, and achieves its fullest potential, then theoretically it could reach a state where it cannot be improved. By comparison, in a first-person shooter you could always make the gunplay 'feel better' or the movement 'more responsive.' There is always room for improvement and what counts as an improvement is subjective. Puzzles (actual logic-based puzzles, not like adventure game moon-logic puzzles) are, I think, abstract enough where subjective improvements can be negated. And if you don't ruin it by putting in silly things like a 'story' or 'characters' then you could, maybe, I think, perhaps, have a game that cannot be improved - a functionally perfect game.

Baba is You (since this is a review for Baba is You) is probably as close to the functionally perfect game as you can reasonably get. I really can't think of anything that could be added or taken away from the game to improve it. And yet it is not perfect because we humans are not perfect. Our brains are not developed enough and we are just not intelligent enough to fully grasp this game.

My working theory is that Baba is You fell out of a portal from a dimension where humans are an average of 20 - 60 IQ points smarter than we are. They had grown bored of the simple puzzle games that they had played and wanted a real challenge. And so the smartest minds of their nerd-ass society, in between their rounds of quantum chess and hypercube 18x18 sudoku, decided to make Baba is You. And they rejoiced for they couldn't figure out some of the solutions immediately.

Unfortunately for our society, a copy of the game fell through a dimensional wormhole and onto our digital storefronts. Even more unfortunately, some of those smart people from that nerd dimension fell through too and now live online to tell us that the solution is actually very simple and we're just not thinking hard enough and it only took them a couple hours to beat the penultimate puzzle within a puzzle in the secret room in the hidden area unlocked by finding the second way of beating the level that the majority of players couldn't figure out normally. And they solved it before pushing a single button because they could simply observe, visualise, and then deduce the mechanics of the puzzle within their mind.

No, I'm not mad at this game. It didn't make me feel intellectually insecure at all. I think I'm gonna go play a Lego game or something.

(Completed because I saw the credits)