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The content on this blog is my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the US Navy in any way.


Sunday, June 23, 2019

Game review: Baba is You

It's been a while since I played a puzzle game this ridiculously absurd and difficult. I'm a bit surprised I liked it, since I don't normally like stuff that requires tons of lateral thinking, but I did enjoy it quite a bit.

At its core, Baba is You is just about getting your character to the goal in each level, with various objects in the environment that you have to use or bypass in order to reach the goal. The catch that makes this game unique, though, is that the rules which define what all of the object in the level do are also present as blocks of text you can manipulate. Walls that block your path can be completely ignored if you change the rule that makes them solid, an easy-to-reach object can be made into the goal if the original one is out of reach, or you can even change which object on the map is under the player's control.

The first few levels are simple enough, requiring only minor manipulations. It gets harder fast, though; by the second world or so you'll be making all sorts of absurd changes to the world around you in order to even have a chance at victory. It's hilarious and maddening all at once.

One of the things I liked a lot is that the difficulty does ramp upwards rather smoothly. A lot of the tricks you need for later levels are logical extensions of the things you're doing earlier, and while the game doesn't go out of its way to highlight them, it also tends to give you one new extension at a time. Each world has its own unique concept it tends to focus on, so success in the first few levels of a world tends to make the rest easier. It still gets very difficult quickly, but it could have been much worse if the levels had been in even a slightly different order.

I highly recommend this game if you like puzzle games, although that does come with a warning that it's not for someone who is easily frustrated.

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