Incline Baba is You - A puzzle game about changing the rules.

[Horton]

cute game

 

[HansDampf]

 

[Curratum]

Bought, played for a bit. Overpriced Sokoban clone with a few extra steps and very tedious logic puzzles.

Disappointing.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Sorta reminds me of a puzzle game I played when I was 6 or 7. Might have to give it a try to see what a modern take on the game style is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Lolo

 

[Spukrian]

This is made by the guy who also made Environmental Station Alpha and later created Noita with a couple of others... I'm interested, but I have a lot of puzzle games already.

 

[Jenkem]

it's nothing like sokoban or adventures of lolo, those primarily focus on moving obstacles to get to the end. this game is about moving things around to create logical syntax to become a winner

 

[Ranselknulf]

That's what it reminded me of, the moving things around bit.

The difference here appears to be the opportunity for multiple win conditions, or tricks to make you think you can win one way when there is an alternate real win condition.

Ie. X is Win instead of reach location x to win.

The restricted nature of movement unless a block is moved to a specific location is similar to the game I mentioned. The demo video showed you having to cross a river to get to the "win" spot, but you had to move a block first for example.

Honestly, you wouldnt even need to be able to read to beat a game like this. If I didn't know English I'd approach this game like I did the Japanese wizardry games when I was a kid. Do something and then try to figure out what it did.

I stand by my opinion and there is no point arguing further about it until I've tried the game.

I look forward to hearing from people playing the game.

 

[Hag]

I played the game for a solid hour before refunding it. Not a very long time, but enough to clear all first world. While the idea felt great, I found the implementation lacking. For every "think outside the box" puzzle there was ten more "push blocks around no mistake allowed". Most of them left no room for error, which became tedious when you have to start a puzzle for the tenth time because of an unfortunate move ; I often felt was being railroaded on invisible rails. Creativity being usually punished (or disregarded) since you have to walk the steps designed by the developer, making a terrible waste of an otherwise well-thought system.

But since many people are adamant it is very good, I guess it can appeal to some. There are puzzles indeed challenging, but it is not the clever mindfuck I was expecting.

 

[V_K]

Most of them left no room for error, which became tedious when you have to start a puzzle for the tenth time because of an unfortunate move

If you even failed to figure out there's a key for undoing any number of last moves, the game is indeed not for you.

 

[Hag]

Now that you talk about it I did not figured it at first. But when you must undo almost all your moves because you missed on step at the very beginning it is not really helpful.
But you are right, I felt the game was not for me. I tried, I got refunded, no regrets.

 

[Jenkem]

that's why there's a restart key as well...

 

[JDR13]

It's not for retards. That much is obvious.

 

[Ringhausen]

I played the game for a solid hour before refunding it. Not a very long time, but enough to clear all first world. While the idea felt great, I found the implementation lacking. For every "think outside the box" puzzle there was ten more "push blocks around no mistake allowed". Most of them left no room for error, which became tedious when you have to start a puzzle for the tenth time because of an unfortunate move ; I often felt was being railroaded on invisible rails. Creativity being usually punished (or disregarded) since you have to walk the steps designed by the developer, making a terrible waste of an otherwise well-thought system.

I put 20 hours into it and feel mostly the same. For every clever puzzle that made me smile there was another obtuse one that just has you meticulously push blocks around in a very specific order to get it right. A complete mixed bag that left me feeling exhausted.

 

[3 others]

Oh look, last month's Level Editor update added 150+ new levels to the game. They're generally not quite as focused and polished as the ones in the original Baba, and a lot of them revolve around new verbs and gimmicks but damn, there's a lot of quality puzzling among these "B-sides".

 

[3 others]

I played the game for a solid hour before refunding it. Not a very long time, but enough to clear all first world. While the idea felt great, I found the implementation lacking. For every "think outside the box" puzzle there was ten more "push blocks around no mistake allowed". Most of them left no room for error, which became tedious when you have to start a puzzle for the tenth time because of an unfortunate move ; I often felt was being railroaded on invisible rails. Creativity being usually punished (or disregarded) since you have to walk the steps designed by the developer, making a terrible waste of an otherwise well-thought system.

I put 20 hours into it and feel mostly the same. For every clever puzzle that made me smile there was another obtuse one that just has you meticulously push blocks around in a very specific order to get it right. A complete mixed bag that left me feeling exhausted.

I can't disagree about the obtuseness of some later puzzles when the game goes all in on exploiting its edge cases, but I think that's the price you have to be ready to pay for the sheer amount of creativity and variation the dev pumped into this game. Even after finishing the whole game (with some helpful hints, there's a great website for that), I can't say that I really grokked the interactions with some complex verbs (fuck you Swap) or word stacking in general. A few of the solutions I had to look up left me feeling I wouldn't have figured that out in a million years.

But when Baba is You gets it right - and it gets it right waaayy more often than not - it has some of the best puzzle design anywhere. Magicians say that a good performance has a three-part structure: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. The best Baba puzzles have something similar: first there's The Nudge towards an obvious path which seems to lead to solving the level. Next, there there's The Catch ("No, wait, Text is still Pull") or several ("Damn, Keke is Moving in the wrong direction") that usually made me chuckle out loud - a habit my wife found endlessly amusing. Finally, there's The... uh, Delight when you manage to work around the Catch to get to a solution.

 

[Ringhausen]

I think the game deserves its praise, since it really is a novel concept, but it's also overhyped. Everyone raves about those brilliant lateral thinking puzzles, but they are only part of the game. There are plenty of braindead puzzles where the solution is so obvious there's nothing to it, or the ones where the solution is also clear, there's no trick or twist to it, but you have to zig and zag in the exact perfect order to reach the goal. They definitely went with the quantity over quality approach imo. I would've much preferred a shorter game with a 'best of' collection.
In the end it all left a sour taste in my mouth because I like finishing games, but there was just... too much here. And some of the late game ones just felt like glitching or breaking the game, which I would've never logically induced.
It was cool to try such a different game, but I suspect people hold back their criticism of it because they're afraid of getting called stupid.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Incredible game really. I think it would be great to play with kids, too.

The concept really carries it to greatness, despite its flaws (some levels require precise micromanaged movements, which kind of defeat the systemic aspect of the whole idea). Very refreshing.