Baba is You Uses Rules as Gameplay
Quick Take: The game Baba Is You shows that it is possible for a game not to have an enormous world but still to be considered huge. Through changing the rules into entities that the player can manipulate, it manages to generate more creativity through one mechanic than what many huge games achieve through their enormous worlds.
Imagine this: a goat, a wall, and the word “is” walk into a store, competing with hundreds of thousand-dollar games.
Of course, whether you’re an indie game developer, or a avid gamer, we know exactly how the story goes: the games with the big marketing, big budget, and big worlds always get the money.
But when you sit down to really play the game, you start to realize that…
Baba isn’t You—
Baba is Genius.
For the uninitiated, Baba Is You is a puzzle game where the rules are literally words you can push around. Change “Baba Is You” to “Rock Is You” and suddenly you’re a rock. Make “Flag Is Win” into “Lava Is Win” and now walking into lava is victory, not death.
https://hempuli.com/baba/ ←check this!
It’s minimalistic. It’s weird. And my gosh, it’s brilliant.
Made by a tiny indie team without a 500-person mocap department or a single cameo, the game has already generated $5-$13 million in gross revenue!
It’s proof that you don’t need overblown physics or dramatic swings at worldbuilding to keep a game interesting and relevant: Baba is you is the definition of ONE singular mechanic carrying the entire game.
How to Take Baba is You, and improve your own games
Looking at other games and tweaking your own is a skill that you grow and nurture as a game developer, or as someone who wants to make the most with their time.
Depth over Breadth
Most big budget use dozens of mechanics that minimally interact. Baba Is You works because every mechanic can touch every other mechanic, and the fun comes from combinations, not from adding more variables.
What you can learn from Baba is You’s game mechanics:
Pick 2-3 mechanics in any game that you make, and push them really hard. For this case, let’s suppose our game mechanic is the way a leaf blower disperses substances.
If adding some new mechanic (say, you’re thinking of adding the concept of batteries to the leaf blower) doesn’t create at least 2 interesting interactions with what’s already in your game (the battery pushes a player to manage time, and batteries can be conserved by reducing the intensity of the blowing), then cut it.
Depth over Breadth
Players remember what they figure out, not what you tell them. In Baba, the first puzzles are lessons disguised as levels—they are really safe spaces to fail, try something else, and kinda play around with the game’s limits.
Baba is You uses it’s wordswapping mechanic all over the place, but slowly amps the difficulty instead of elaborately making a new enviornment or a boss battle that was more difficult than the last: the game introduces a new word by giving the player the mechanic and letting the player play around with it (for example, “wall”), then makes the player do it again slightly harder (say that the wall block is behind lava), then combine it with something they already know (“wall” and “is” blocks), thereby showing that reinventing the wheel might sometimes be the best, most engaging option for a game.
Respect Your Player’s Time
Every extra click, slow animation, or backtrack is a tax on fun.
Baba keeps player movement very tight with instant resets and short levels. There really isn’t any busywork (buying supplies from stores, or refueling). I go over this a lot in my previous blog posts: how less buttons are more fun because the player can actually play the game, and experiment for themselves.
For games that are as simple as Baba is You, keeping each level small and compact adds a niche to the game: it makes you feel like you can get a quick game in during study breaks, on the go, or right before bed.
When indie games focus on tight mechanics, intuitive teaching, and respect for player time, they embarrass big companies! If you’re curious about more innovative games to get some ideas, check out the rest of my blog posts!
