BABA IS YOU

Developer/publisher Hempuli Format PC, Switch

The opportunity to break the law rarely presents itself in puzzle games. Normally, we’re bound to a set of rules; they may not be hard and fast, but any adjustments are determined by the designer. In Baba Is You those rules change from stage to stage – to avoid any confusion they’re written within the levels themselves – and, crucially, you’re usually responsible. At times, they’re immutable, with no room to shift things around. Elsewhere, even the fixings are an illusion. When nouns and verbs are trapped, you can free them by inhabiting the scenery that’s holding them captive. Here, the locks are strange, and the keys often weirder still.

There’s plenty of block-pushing involved, yet, Baba Is You doesn’t feel like a Sokoban game. Perhaps because the back-and-forth manoeuvring is rarely the point: more often you’re encouraged to think outside the box – at least when you’re not invited to be the box. It’s the puzzler as existential crisis: at times, we’re reminded of Super Mario Odyssey, of all things, in that there is a similar joy in becoming something new, with all the potential for silliness that entails. And, like Nintendo’s game, it makes the absolute most of its ingenious pitch.

The result is transformative, transgressive and unfailingly generous: many levels have more than one solution, while developer Arvi Teikari lobs in easy stages both for the sake of throwaway gimmicks and seemingly to give perplexed players a break. He doesn’t demand you complete every stage before letting you move on, either – the really tricky stuff is entirely optional. In a strong year for puzzle games – Gwen Frey’s Kine can consider itself unfortunate not to have made our ten – Baba stands above the rest. With a level editor being patched in soon, it could well end up as our most-played puzzler of 2020, too.