WEBVTT 00:00:04.590 --> 00:00:09.330 Every December, I use my last video of the year to celebrate the most innovative and 00:00:09.330 --> 00:00:12.990 inventive game I played in the last 12 months. 00:00:12.990 --> 00:00:18.500 In previous years I’ve looked at the YouTube detective drama Her Story, the uncanny chatbot 00:00:18.500 --> 00:00:24.700 game Event[0], the serpent simulator Snake Pass, and the time-travelling murder mystery, 00:00:24.700 --> 00:00:26.410 Return of the Obra Dinn. 00:00:26.410 --> 00:00:30.160 These games have done things I’ve never seen before, and are impressive in both their 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:32.760 idea and their execution. 00:00:32.760 --> 00:00:37.530 They might not be the very best games of their respective years, but when it comes to fresh 00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:40.810 concepts done well, these are the games I would recommend. 00:00:40.810 --> 00:00:46.420 I certainly had lots of choices to pick from for 2019, like the combat-free role playing 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:52.590 game Disco Elysium, the hilarious honk ‘em up Untitled Goose Game, the sci-fi archeology 00:00:52.590 --> 00:00:57.829 game Outer Wilds, and the other sci-fi archeology game, Heaven’s Vault. 00:00:57.829 --> 00:01:04.770 But this year, nothing quite beat the mind-melting puzzle game, Baba Is You. 00:01:04.770 --> 00:01:09.060 Now, from first glance, this game looks pretty simple. 00:01:09.060 --> 00:01:15.030 You hop around a grid and push blocks - making it part of a sub genre of block-shoving puzzlers, 00:01:15.030 --> 00:01:18.090 all inspired by the Japanese game Sokoban. 00:01:18.090 --> 00:01:23.140 Here’s where things start getting strange, though: in each level, the rules of the game 00:01:23.140 --> 00:01:25.640 are written on screen as simple sentences. 00:01:25.640 --> 00:01:30.530 Like, “Baba Is You”, which means you control this funny white critter called Baba. 00:01:30.530 --> 00:01:34.530 Or “Wall Is Stop”, which means you can’t walk through walls. 00:01:34.530 --> 00:01:39.600 “Rock Is Push” means you can shove rocks around, and “Flag Is Win” means touching 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:42.349 the flag will finish the level. 00:01:42.349 --> 00:01:47.350 And then here’s the kicker: those rules are, themselves, blocks that can be pushed 00:01:47.350 --> 00:01:52.440 around - allowing you to break the logic that dictates the level at hand, and create entirely 00:01:52.440 --> 00:01:55.500 new gameplay by rewriting the rules. 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:59.690 Remove the word “Stop” from “Wall Is Stop”, for example, and now you can waltz 00:01:59.690 --> 00:02:01.039 straight past walls. 00:02:01.039 --> 00:02:06.540 Change “Flag Is Win” to “Rock Is Win”, and now the rock becomes your goal. 00:02:06.540 --> 00:02:11.310 Or push "Rock: into this sentence, and you switch the main character of the game into a tiny 00:02:11.310 --> 00:02:12.620 brown boulder. 00:02:12.620 --> 00:02:13.700 Cheeky. 00:02:13.700 --> 00:02:18.110 And thus begins a few hundred levels where the solution is never to simply reach the 00:02:18.110 --> 00:02:23.580 goal - but to rewrite the rules of the universe until you’re in a world where the goal is 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:25.020 now reachable. 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:28.209 It is infinitely intelligent and endlessly surprising. 00:02:28.209 --> 00:02:33.489 It’s tough, but far from impossible, and practically every level is a revalatory experience 00:02:33.489 --> 00:02:35.609 with a satisfying aha! moment. 00:02:35.609 --> 00:02:40.219 And if you haven’t played it yet, now’s your time to pause the video, head to Steam 00:02:40.219 --> 00:02:42.840 or the Switch eShop, and get the game. 00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:44.870 I hope that you love it. 00:02:44.870 --> 00:02:48.760 When you’re done, remember to come back, and we’ll chat more about how the game builds 00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:52.170 its brain-busting puzzles 00:02:52.170 --> 00:02:56.500 Baba Is You is the brain-child of Finnish indie developer Arvi Teikari. 00:02:56.500 --> 00:03:01.450 He told me over email back in April that he was inspired to make the game as part of the 00:03:01.450 --> 00:03:03.810 2017 Nordic Game Jam. 00:03:03.810 --> 00:03:08.650 The jam’s theme was “Not There”, and the word “Not” made him think of logic 00:03:08.650 --> 00:03:11.180 operators in programming languages. 00:03:11.180 --> 00:03:15.860 Combine that with a block-pushing puzzle game like Snakebird or Stephen’s Sausage Roll, 00:03:15.860 --> 00:03:21.040 and this “resulted in a mental image of a block of ice not melting in hot lava due 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:24.609 to the statement "Ice Is Not Melt”. 00:03:24.609 --> 00:03:29.209 The scrappy, prototypical Baba Is You ended up winning that Game Jam, and the reaction 00:03:29.209 --> 00:03:34.120 was so positive that Teikari decided to take his underbaked jam game and turn it into a 00:03:34.120 --> 00:03:35.379 full fat release. 00:03:35.379 --> 00:03:42.120 Two years later, and the designer had about 219 ultra clever levels for players to work through. 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:46.829 So how, exactly, is one of these Baba Is You levels made? 00:03:46.829 --> 00:03:52.930 To start, Teikari tries to think of an interesting interaction, or set-up that could come out 00:03:52.930 --> 00:03:56.040 of the game’s encyclopaedia of words and rules. 00:03:56.040 --> 00:04:01.379 “Pull”, for example, could lead to a level where Keke needs to drag a key across a lake. 00:04:01.379 --> 00:04:06.279 A teleporter doesn’t have to just move objects, but could also be used to move around the 00:04:06.279 --> 00:04:07.879 rules themselves. 00:04:07.879 --> 00:04:12.099 And the word “Has”, could lend itself to a level where you drop a box every-time 00:04:12.100 --> 00:04:15.940 Keke dies, but that box immediately turns back into Keke. 00:04:15.940 --> 00:04:17.140 Bonkers. 00:04:17.140 --> 00:04:22.000 Speaking at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona this summer, Teikari said, “when I’ve 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:26.780 got this idea of ‘hey, that would be cool to see in a level’, I try to figure out 00:04:26.780 --> 00:04:31.880 what kind of level do I have to build so that when the player is playing the level they 00:04:31.880 --> 00:04:34.260 have to use that interaction”. 00:04:34.260 --> 00:04:38.340 And that’s where we get to the fascinating contradiction at the heart of Baba Is You. 00:04:38.340 --> 00:04:42.379 Because while this is a game that offers a seemingly infinite world of possibilities 00:04:42.379 --> 00:04:46.669 - its puzzles are largely defined by what you can’t do. 00:04:46.669 --> 00:04:52.130 Because while making an open ended puzzle game sounds great, it’s open to easy answers 00:04:52.130 --> 00:04:57.630 - like Scribblenauts, where half of the levels can be finished by writing in the word jetpack. 00:04:57.630 --> 00:05:02.710 So the designer’s job is actually to lock you in and force restrictions on you. 00:05:02.710 --> 00:05:07.500 And in Baba Is You that’s achieved by the words that are and aren’t on screen, the 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:11.940 way some sentences are pushed against walls or locked behind fences, and the claustrophobic 00:05:11.940 --> 00:05:14.270 grid that constricts your movements. 00:05:14.270 --> 00:05:19.069 With these restrictions in place, the designer can lock off easy answers - and force you 00:05:19.069 --> 00:05:22.169 to find the clever trick at the heart of the puzzle. 00:05:22.169 --> 00:05:27.039 Teikari calls this process reverse engineering - of essentially starting with the solution 00:05:27.039 --> 00:05:32.139 and then working backwards to throw up restrictions and make a puzzle that supports it. 00:05:32.139 --> 00:05:36.479 As an example, take the level Baba Doesn’t Respond. 00:05:36.479 --> 00:05:42.870 In this level we play as Keke, and the solution is to use two belts to redirect a moving Baba. 00:05:42.870 --> 00:05:46.430 So how does the designer force this interaction? 00:05:46.430 --> 00:05:52.180 Let’s start by putting a wall and a locked door between Keke and the Flag. 00:05:52.180 --> 00:05:57.440 If we put a rule here like “Door Is Shut And Open”, we can just push the word “Shut” 00:05:57.440 --> 00:06:00.340 over and then go to the flag. 00:06:03.930 --> 00:06:09.080 But if we put a reed here, and make it so creating that first sentence simultaneously 00:06:09.099 --> 00:06:16.159 makes the rule “Reed Is Defeat”, we suddenly put Keke in a pickle - opening the door also 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:18.220 denies access to that door. 00:06:18.220 --> 00:06:20.420 Hm! Quite the catch! 00:06:20.430 --> 00:06:25.400 So, the player will hopefully realise that they need to have Keke be stood in this exact 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:30.370 spot when the rule is triggered - and they just need to figure out how to move the sentence 00:06:30.370 --> 00:06:31.569 from afar. 00:06:31.569 --> 00:06:34.080 Answer: “Baba Is Move”. 00:06:34.080 --> 00:06:39.020 Now the level would be way too easy if we could just put Baba here, make “Baba Is 00:06:39.020 --> 00:06:43.889 Move”, and then walk to the right spot and wait for Baba to walk into the words. 00:06:43.889 --> 00:06:46.960 So, some restrictions are added. 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:50.479 This single hedge block means Baba only has a tiny run-up. 00:06:50.479 --> 00:06:55.490 And having “Move” be in the corner makes it impossible to, well, move, so the sentence 00:06:55.490 --> 00:07:00.360 “Baba Is Move” has to be made on the furthest left edge of the screen. 00:07:00.360 --> 00:07:05.129 These two things combine to make it impossible to make “Baba Is Move” and then walk to 00:07:05.129 --> 00:07:09.530 that all-important spot, because Baba will have already made the reed deadly by the time 00:07:09.530 --> 00:07:10.800 you get there. 00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:16.189 And thus, you must use these belts to create a much longer path for Baba to take, Chu Chu 00:07:16.189 --> 00:07:20.780 Rocket style, which will give you enough time to walk across the level before he triggers 00:07:20.780 --> 00:07:22.449 the sentence change. 00:07:22.449 --> 00:07:26.439 Then it’s just a case of sprinkling on some pretty decoration, and putting in some other 00:07:26.439 --> 00:07:30.389 bits to restrict your movement or stop unintended solutions. 00:07:30.389 --> 00:07:32.940 Though, many of those are left in by the designer 00:07:32.940 --> 00:07:36.100 - provided they don’t make the real solution trivial. 00:07:39.060 --> 00:07:43.000 So as you can see, the solution to the puzzle is actually pretty simple. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:48.120 But by obfuscating the answer behind a sequence of problems, it creates this interesting phenomenon 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:52.780 where Teikari is working backwards from the solution, locking up doors behind him as he 00:07:52.780 --> 00:07:54.659 gets to the starting conditions for the puzzle. 00:07:54.659 --> 00:07:59.789 And then the player then moves in the opposite direction, opening each door in turn until 00:07:59.789 --> 00:08:00.919 they get to the solution. 00:08:00.919 --> 00:08:06.379 And by setting the stage up in this way, the player is actually somewhat lured towards 00:08:06.379 --> 00:08:07.379 the solution. 00:08:07.379 --> 00:08:12.009 Each level contains a number of tiny problems that render something impossible - forcing 00:08:12.009 --> 00:08:16.349 the player to find a different, more creative way to overcome the problem. 00:08:16.349 --> 00:08:21.450 These stumbling blocks then stack together, creating a pathway to the level’s solution. 00:08:21.450 --> 00:08:25.470 Here’s how that looks in a favourite stage of mine: Tiny Pond. 00:08:25.470 --> 00:08:29.590 In this level, the word “Win” needs to be released from a pond. 00:08:29.590 --> 00:08:34.800 The water is tagged as “Shut”, and Baba is tagged as “Open”, which means you can walk 00:08:34.800 --> 00:08:39.260 into the water to unlock it and gain access - but this also destroys Baba. 00:08:39.260 --> 00:08:42.260 So, we’re going to need to try something else. 00:08:42.260 --> 00:08:46.821 We’ve got two other words: “Key” and “Flag”, and so we could make “Key Is 00:08:46.821 --> 00:08:50.920 Open”, but there’s no “Push” verb, meaning the key just sits there. 00:08:50.920 --> 00:08:55.700 The only way to make it move is to write “Key Is You”, but we run into the same problem: 00:08:55.710 --> 00:08:59.900 you’re destroyed as soon as you touch the water. 00:08:59.900 --> 00:09:05.910 By now you should hopefully be thinking, “okay, maybe I can be both key and Baba at the same 00:09:05.910 --> 00:09:09.360 time, because when one dies, I can still control the other one”. 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:13.020 But, sadly, there aren’t enough words to make that sentence work. 00:09:13.020 --> 00:09:17.670 However, the sequence of logical leaps have got you this far and there’s only one possible 00:09:17.670 --> 00:09:22.340 way forward now: if you make flag is key, you’ve got two keys. 00:09:22.340 --> 00:09:27.230 And now if you have “Key Is You”, you can control both, sacrifice one to open a 00:09:27.230 --> 00:09:32.690 hole in the water, and use the remaining key to finish the stage. 00:09:32.690 --> 00:09:35.650 It’s really clever. 00:09:35.650 --> 00:09:41.000 The set-up for the stage walked us right into the central problem of the level: we need 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:44.810 to be “Open”, but we also don’t want to disappear when we use ourselves. 00:09:44.810 --> 00:09:49.640 And so we’re in the perfect spot to try and figure out the actual solution - and go 00:09:49.640 --> 00:09:52.640 “aha!” when we get there. 00:09:52.640 --> 00:09:56.720 If this was the first level that you played in this game, you would be - I think - 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:58.220 completely stumped. 00:09:58.220 --> 00:10:03.000 But luckily, playing Baba Is You means constantly adding to an ever expanding knowledge base 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.710 that grows with every stage you play. 00:10:05.710 --> 00:10:12.010 So Tiny Pond builds on the level Jelly Throne, where you control two characters at once. 00:10:12.010 --> 00:10:17.260 And Tiny Pond’s solution reappears in the stage Unreachable Shores, where you sacrifice 00:10:17.260 --> 00:10:20.760 one Keke, so the survivor can move forward. 00:10:20.760 --> 00:10:23.960 But this sort of learning starts from the very beginning of the game. 00:10:23.960 --> 00:10:28.850 Baba Is You is a pretty complicated puzzler, after all, and there’s not a single tutorial 00:10:28.850 --> 00:10:29.850 in sight. 00:10:29.850 --> 00:10:35.500 Instead, the game’s first crop of puzzles all subtly and silently tell you how the game 00:10:35.500 --> 00:10:37.740 works through their solutions. 00:10:37.740 --> 00:10:40.460 So in Level 1, we’re stuck inside a tiny box. 00:10:40.460 --> 00:10:44.570 There’s only one way to get out and that’s to break the sentence “Wall Is Stop”, 00:10:44.570 --> 00:10:47.490 and make the wall no longer a solid object. 00:10:47.490 --> 00:10:51.670 Then, we can make a sentence - “Flag Is Win” - to finish the level. 00:10:51.670 --> 00:10:57.150 That’s breaking and making sentences: the two most fundamental concepts of the game. 00:10:57.150 --> 00:11:01.630 Level 2 is the exact same stage as before but now everything is wrong. 00:11:01.630 --> 00:11:06.780 You play as a wall, the walls are made of flags, and Baba is nowhere to be found. 00:11:06.780 --> 00:11:11.350 This teaches players that nothing in the game has an intrinsic value: it’s only given 00:11:11.350 --> 00:11:13.640 purpose when part of a rule. 00:11:13.640 --> 00:11:18.160 The game keeps this up throughout its first few stages, with solutions that clue us in 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:21.620 to some fundamental concept we’ll definitely need to know later. 00:11:21.620 --> 00:11:26.370 Here, “Lava Is Push overrides” the rule “Lava Is Hot”. 00:11:26.370 --> 00:11:30.730 In this puzzle, we learn that we can create two sentences from the same “Is” block, 00:11:30.730 --> 00:11:32.820 by creating them in a cross. 00:11:32.820 --> 00:11:37.670 And the game will continue to teach new concepts and ideas throughout the adventure. 00:11:37.670 --> 00:11:42.760 Every time a new concept is introduced - like the operator “And” or the words “Open” 00:11:42.760 --> 00:11:48.120 and “Shut”, we’re treated to introductory puzzles that make these new mechanics crystal clear. 00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:53.700 I asked Teikari how he went about making these introductory stages, and he said “If I exhaustively 00:11:53.710 --> 00:11:58.010 go through all the meaningful interactions between elements, eventually I get levels 00:11:58.010 --> 00:12:03.060 where the ‘trick’ is mostly just the basic functionality of a specific element in itself”. 00:12:03.060 --> 00:12:07.990 that can then be put at the beginning of the world, to act as a tutorial for the stages 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:09.760 to come. 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:14.060 While Baba Is You is full of puzzles that will make you feel stumped when you first 00:12:14.070 --> 00:12:18.910 play them, and make you feel smart when you solve them, Teikari’s real goal is to create 00:12:18.910 --> 00:12:21.710 moments of surprise and laughter. 00:12:21.710 --> 00:12:23.760 YOUTUBER: [Laughter]. 00:12:23.760 --> 00:12:29.980 YOUTUBER: “There’s no rule saying ‘Wall Is Stop’. [Laughter] 00:12:29.980 --> 00:12:35.730 I was confining myself to this stupid little area and I didn’t need to.” 00:12:35.730 --> 00:12:40.960 That’s certainly one way it’s done - by playing with your expectations for how things work. 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:45.490 In this level, for example, most players will assume they need to unlock the door. 00:12:45.490 --> 00:12:47.940 But actually they need to unlock the wall. 00:12:47.940 --> 00:12:52.860 There are also just bonkers rules that go way beyond the basic set-up. 00:12:52.860 --> 00:12:57.270 “Empty” allows you to control or fill the empty space in each stage. 00:12:57.270 --> 00:13:00.330 “Make” lets you create a trail of objects when you move. 00:13:00.330 --> 00:13:04.710 “More” lets you duplicate keys until they fill every spot in the space. 00:13:04.710 --> 00:13:10.480 And just like the original idea for the game, “Not” allows you to flip rules on their head. 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:15.280 Plus, in an attempt to make sure every single interaction is explored - a similar design 00:13:15.290 --> 00:13:20.380 philosophy as one used by Braid developer Jonathan Blow - Teikari has “Text” be 00:13:20.380 --> 00:13:23.950 a word, allowing you to manipulate the rules with other rules. 00:13:23.950 --> 00:13:27.850 And by the time “Level” is introduced, you’re not only moving the entire screen 00:13:27.850 --> 00:13:32.940 around - but breaking out the stage and bouncing around the map screen in a mind-melting meta 00:13:32.940 --> 00:13:36.220 exploration of the game’s fundamental logic. 00:13:36.220 --> 00:13:38.880 There were more ideas that didn’t make the cut, of course. 00:13:38.880 --> 00:13:42.920 Teikari told me that “Stick”, which would make objects clump together, was removed because 00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:45.490 it created nightmare programming problems. 00:13:45.490 --> 00:13:49.670 And “Safe”, which would render an object invulnerable, was left on the cutting room 00:13:49.670 --> 00:13:52.880 floor because it was hazy, and uninteresting. 00:13:52.880 --> 00:13:56.460 Not everything that made it into the game is a complete winner, if you ask me: 00:13:56.460 --> 00:13:58.490 a stage where you trap Keke 00:13:58.490 --> 00:14:03.041 under words and then push them away from the corner is awkward and confusing, and the word 00:14:03.041 --> 00:14:06.250 “Swap” is like “Tele” but not as cool. 00:14:06.250 --> 00:14:11.370 With 200-odd stages, though, there’s always going to be a few that don’t click for everyone. 00:14:11.370 --> 00:14:16.010 But Teikari points to an army of playtesters who gave feedback on stages, and discovered 00:14:16.010 --> 00:14:17.050 alternative solutions.. 00:14:17.050 --> 00:14:21.450 “I’m extremely thankful for how much testers have done for the game”, he says. 00:14:21.450 --> 00:14:25.920 That group of testers, it turns out, is a who’s-who of puzzle game wizards, and includes 00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:31.970 the designers behind Ending, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, Pipe Push Paradise, Starseed 00:14:31.970 --> 00:14:35.180 Pilgrim, Minit, and The Witness. 00:14:37.550 --> 00:14:42.780 Baba Is You is a surprising, silly, and mind-bogglingly complex game. 00:14:42.790 --> 00:14:48.200 And it had every chance of becoming too difficult to grasp, too esoteric to understand, or too 00:14:48.200 --> 00:14:50.640 freeform to actually produce good puzzles. 00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:54.660 But Arvi Teikari has proven himself as a master of puzzle design. 00:14:54.660 --> 00:15:00.640 He introduces the loopy logic of Baba Is You slowly and subtly, so everyone can understand it. 00:15:00.640 --> 00:15:05.380 With his reverse-engineering process, he buries a clever trick under layers of problems. 00:15:05.380 --> 00:15:09.740 But they’re never red herrings or pointless busy work - they’re about leading the player 00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:11.910 to the catch at the centre of the puzzle. 00:15:11.910 --> 00:15:16.390 And he’s more interested in surprises and silliness than rock-hard challenge, making 00:15:16.390 --> 00:15:20.050 for a game that will make you laugh more than it will make you frustrated. 00:15:20.050 --> 00:15:24.970 It’s simply a really great puzzle game, built on a fresh concept that was executed 00:15:24.970 --> 00:15:25.970 perfectly. 00:15:25.970 --> 00:15:28.680 A no-brainer for this year’s final video. 00:15:31.060 --> 00:15:33.310 Hey, thank you so much for watching! 00:15:33.310 --> 00:15:37.240 I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for all of your support in 2019. 00:15:37.240 --> 00:15:41.890 I’m really proud of the stuff I made and your support has meant the world. 00:15:41.890 --> 00:15:47.060 I’ve already got so many video ideas lined up for 2020 but it's time for a quick break. 00:15:47.060 --> 00:15:51.340 So I hope you'll have an amazing Christmas, and I’ll see you in the new year.