Baba Is You turns the rules of a puzzle game into the puzzle itself. Every level hands you the logic that governs it — written out as blocks you can shove around — and dares you to break it.
Arvi Teikari, the Finnish independent developer who works as Hempuli, built the game from a short demo made for the 2017 Nordic Game Jam. It launched on 13 March 2019 for PC and Nintendo Switch, with mobile versions following in June 2021. A free update, “Baba Make Level,” arrived on November 17, 2021, adding 250 new and previously unused levels plus a level editor with online sharing.
Trailer, via Hempuli.
One White Creature, Three Tiles
You usually control Baba, a white creature, on a single screen. The field holds objects, obstacles and movable word tiles. Those tiles are nouns for the things on screen — Baba, the goal flag, walls, hazards, other creatures — plus verbs like is and has, operators like and and not, and property words such as you, push, pull, stop and win.
Line up three or more tiles vertically or horizontally into valid syntax and you make a rule. That rule holds until you break the string. Move is and win onto another object and the goal changes. Strip stop off a wall and you walk through it.
The game’s own description puts it plainly: with some simple block-pushing you can turn yourself into a rock, turn patches of grass into dangerously hot obstacles, and even change the goal you need to reach to something entirely different.
That is the whole trick, and it is enough for hundreds of levels. The word tiles are not a menu or a settings screen. They sit in the same space you occupy, subject to the same pushing and blocking as everything else.
The Corner You Cannot Reach
Some levels lock a rule in place. The tiles forming it sit in a corner you cannot reach, so the rule stands for the entire level. You have to solve around it rather than through it.
That constraint is where Baba Is You stops being a toy and starts being a design argument. A puzzle game usually teaches you its verbs and then tests how well you use them. This one teaches you its verbs, then hands you the verbs themselves as material and asks what you can build.
Levels are never explicitly failed. If no object carries an active “is you” rule, you simply have nothing left to control. The game does not scold you. It just stops, and you restart.
You finish a level when an object under an “is you” rule occupies the same tile as an object under an “is win” rule — or when one object holds both properties at once, making the player and the goal the same thing. That last possibility is not a curiosity. It is a legitimate solution the game expects you to find.
Baba Is You is a puzzle game where you can change the rules by which you play.
Why a Rule Is Also an Object
The genius is that the rules are physical. A rule is not a line of text in a manual; it is three blocks you can shove. That means every rule is also a potential object, and every object is a potential rule.
Consider what follows from that. If the win condition can be moved, then winning is a resource you can relocate. If the player property can be moved, then who you are is negotiable. If the stop property can be removed, then the level’s geometry is a suggestion.
Most puzzle games hide their systems and ask you to infer them. Baba Is You puts the system on the board in plain language and asks you to edit it. The vocabulary is tiny — a few dozen words at most — but the combinations run deep because the words interact with each other and with the terrain.
The game also respects your time in a way that matters. There is no timer, no score, no penalty for restarting. You can sit with a level and turn it over. That patience is baked into the design, and it is the right call.
The Demo That Grew
Baba Is You started small. Teikari built it as a short demo for the 2017 Nordic Game Jam, and the finished game keeps that jam-born clarity: one screen, a handful of elements, a rule you can rewrite.
The expansion came later. “Baba Make Level” added 250 levels in November 2021, along with an editor and online sharing. That update turned a finite puzzle collection into something closer to a platform. Players could build their own rule-bending levels and pass them around.
The game is available on Linux, Android, PC, Mac, iOS and Nintendo Switch. It is single player throughout. Its genres are puzzle, strategy and indie, and it carries action and fantasy themes.
Where the Difficulty Turns Into a Cliff
The game received generally favorable reviews from critics, and the critical aggregate sits at 8.0 out of 10 across five outlets. That number is fair, and it is also a little misleading, because Baba Is You is not a game that lives or dies on polish.
Its presentation is spare. Its art is simple. Its sound is minimal. None of that is the point. The point is that the rules are the puzzle, and that idea is executed with a consistency few games manage.
The best levels in Baba Is You make you feel stupid for exactly as long as it takes to feel clever. That gap — the moment before the solution and the moment after — is the entire emotional range of a great puzzle game, and this one hits it repeatedly.
Not every level lands. Some solutions are fiddly rather than elegant, and the difficulty curve is less a curve than a series of cliffs. The game will happily let you stare at a screen for twenty minutes with no idea what it wants.
That is a real cost. It is also the price of a game that refuses to explain itself, and Baba Is You is better for refusing.
What the 8.0 Actually Measures
Baba Is You is one of the few puzzle games in recent memory that changes how you think about puzzle games while you are playing it. The rule tiles are not a gimmick bolted onto a standard formula. They are the formula, and Teikari follows the idea further than most developers would dare.
The 8.0 score captures the achievement without overselling the execution. The game is not flawless — its difficulty is uneven, its presentation is deliberately plain, and its later levels can cross from hard into exhausting. But the central mechanic is genuinely novel, and it holds up across hundreds of levels and a level editor that lets players build their own.
If you want a puzzle game that respects your intelligence and then tests it, this is the one. If you want a puzzle game that holds your hand, look elsewhere.
The Numbers Behind Baba Is You
- Title: Baba Is You
- Developer and publisher: Hempuli (Arvi Teikari)
- Released: 13 March 2019 (PC, Nintendo Switch); June 2021 (mobile)
- Update: “Baba Make Level,” November 17, 2021 — 250 levels, level editor, online sharing
- Platforms: Linux, Android, PC, iOS, Mac, Nintendo Switch
- Genres: Puzzle, Strategy, Indie
- Modes: Single player
- Critic aggregate: 8.0 out of 10 (IGDB, 5 outlets)
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