Sometimes when I play too much of the same game I veer off the beaten path and try games that I can just sit, wind down and play. Baba is You is a game that I wanted to play for sometime because I saw how cute it was and the premise behind solving the puzzles interested me. I soon realized after playing about seven hours of the game that I should never assume that a puzzle game is relaxing in any fashion and that I screwed myself by playing this game.

Baba is You is a good ‘ol difficult ass 2D puzzle game brought to you by Hempuli Oy. It is currently on PC, Mac and the Switch and will run you $15.

There is no plot to this game as far as I could tell. You are Baba, an animal that can break the rules and do whatever the hell it wants. There are usually a noun like Key, Baba or Wall and properties like PUSH, PULL, MELT, etc. The player can align Rock is Push and now the player can move the rock, but if that phrases is not connected then Baba cannot move the rock and the same goes for every object in the game. All of these can be interchanged for the player to succeed in their goal of winning.

Baba moves with the help of the directional buttons and Z rewinds and R restarts the level, and that is it. If you make a minor mistake, press Z and re-do the move. Fuck it all up? R is for restart. It’s easy to grapple the controls when it is literally six buttons.

Baba is You contains nine different sections to explore and solve puzzles in. A lake, forest, a garden and a rocket ship are a few of the sections and with with each new section are new mechanics, nouns and properties to make the game even more difficult than the previous section.

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As the game progresses on there are more phrases that pop up and mechanics that can be used for the rest of the game, for instance, Waiting is introduced early on and mechanic will spill over into the later sections of the game. The mechanics adds more depth to the puzzle solving but as I kept playing the difficulty increased to a staggeringly high level. It was borderline frustrating.

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There is not much here to say about Baba is You because it is such a simple concept that does not really doing anything groundbreaking. Baba is you is a real pain in ass because the difficulty arises when the player overthinks. I cannot tell the amount of times that the answer was so god damned easy and I just sat like an idiot and over thought the answer.

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Also, sometimes the answer is difficult to achieve and it takes a lot of thought to understand how to push the words together in the right order and at the right moment so that Baba can slip past an obstacle and win. There was a level where the player has to wait for Keke to stand in a certain spot, push PULL into place and allow Keke to pull Baba to the word KEY so that it can bring it back without overstepping the obstacle above it and perish. It was very rewarding when I figured out the answer but it took a lot of time and I was not ready to dedicate that much time to a single puzzle (which is entirely my dumb ass fault).

Baba is You is a game that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s cute and pseudo-relaxing to play. It is fun when you start the level and are introduced to the new mechanics but it becomes less relaxing when having to keep track of eight different phrases. The amount of levels make the game worth playing even more. There was more than one occasion where I was sitting at my computer desk wondering how to complete a level and a stroke of genius allowed to me complete it. That level of satisfaction is unbound. I felt so clever for knowing to align a phrase and move it in unison to allow me to catch the key and drag it over to the door to get to the flag and win. I recommend Baba is You for many reasons but one is that it is a very good puzzle game that can last for 10+ hours. It is well worth the $15 price tag.