Baba Is You

Baba is You is a clever, challenging indie puzzle game that often confounds, though not always in satisfying ways.

Sokoban and coding collide in this clever puzzler.

Baba is You manages to take the familiar idea of nudging blocks and solving puzzles in a fresh direction. Brilliant.

The game has over 200 puzzles, and I’m roughly 50 deep. I plan to make my way to the finish line, not just because it’s a great game — and it is! — but because its obsession with rules has me rethinking the rules in every other game I love. It’s selfless in a way, a game that lets you bend its rules to appreciate the rules in everything else.

Baba is You is smart, but as later levels force you to consider more variables, the charm wears away

But this is wonderful. Completely wonderful. Original, inspired, challenging, and most importantly of all, that constant sense of “Oh no, how will I ever do this one!” so quickly followed by, “I AM A GENIUS!” It’s a very, very smart game, that has the humility to let you, the player, feel like the clever one

Baba Is You is like a compilation of gift shop brain teasers; they’re not for everyone, but some people can’t get enough of them. And while it may sound like just another sketchy smartphone game, it’s surprisingly one of the most unique puzzlers you can find on the Switch and the way in which it encourages you to break its rules and create your own ones is refreshing and unique.

Even so, as uneventful its music may seem, it does little to sway the view that Baba Is You is an outstandingly inventive and delightful puzzle game to crack.

Baba is You has very high peaks, especially in the early stages and in the introduction of new rules, but its lows are terrible. Trying to be extremely difficult, it ends up with a bad, frustrating, and stale level design. The game seems to have forgotten that less is usually more.

Possibly the most original puzzle game in recent memory, Baba is You is also an exercise in frustration and stretched-out logic.