Solve / Rule-based logic puzzle
Baba Is You
The wall has read the rules, too
A wall can look solid and still have nothing to say about where you may walk. Somewhere on the board, a word is doing the real work.
Which part is the wall?
Look at WALL IS STOP. The wall on the board and the word WALL perform different jobs. One occupies a square. The other helps define what the obstacle does. If the word STOP can be nudged out of line, the wall can still look exactly as imposing while admitting a visitor. The delightful trick is how little the artwork needs to change. You return to a familiar patch of screen carrying an entirely different idea of its geography.
Leave room for the editor
Inventing a rule in your head is the generous part of Baba. Now try assembling it in a room where words have to be pushed from an adjacent square. A word parked neatly against the edge may be in exactly the wrong place for your next edit. The undo command makes experiments cheap, but a few undone moves can change the question entirely. Perhaps the sentence belongs a row higher so you can approach its last word from below.
Explain the move out loud
It helps to say exactly what one push should change and then make it. Sometimes it changes which object responds to movement. Sometimes it changes what reaching a flag would accomplish. Only one word may have moved, so an incorrect prediction is unusually instructive. Later puzzles can still leave an enormous gap between recognising the relevant idea and finding a route that uses it. That particular frustration is also what makes a successfully tested hunch feel so personal.
The verdict
Few puzzlers get such surprising mileage out of reading a familiar sentence twice. Its best discoveries reward patience, and the walk to the next one can be long.
- Pick it for
- Players who like finding a counterexample to a rule they thought they understood.
- Think twice if
- Finding the sentence you want and arranging the blocks to spell it are two separate puzzles.
Gallery
A closer look
Game imagery · Arvi Teikari / Hempuli Oy · Image source ↗