GAME
Baba Is You
The one who moves the rules
Hempuli（Arvi Teikari） · 2019-03-13 · ■■■■■ 5/5 · 9.5/10
Where are you with this game?
Press one and the game goes on your shelf. You can see it on your account page.
In three lines
Baba Is You is a meta-puzzle / sokoban-like puzzle game released by Hempuli Oy in 2019.
Puzzlebyrinth scores it 9.5/10, with a difficulty of 5/5. The one who moves the rules
Its core mechanics are Rule Rewriting / Sokoban-style Pushing.
Our Review
A language Sokoban where you push the rules themselves around.
Mentions across our columns (93)
Puzzle Soundtracks（21）
- 2026-09-25 · DoremiSoundtrack: The Talos Principle: Reawakened — under the tower I was told not to climb, a choir and a drone are waiting
- 2026-09-16 · DoremiSoundtrack: Wilmot's Warehouse — variations as the order for a shelf with no right answer
- 2026-09-08 · DoremiSoundtrack: Minit — the sound that gave up on stillness to keep pace with sixty seconds
- 2026-08-28 · DoremiSoundtrack: Inscryption — The music changes genre the moment you leave the cabin
- 2026-08-27 · DoremiSoundtrack: A Little to the Left — music that never rushes you to finish
- 2026-08-24 · DoremiSoundtrack: Terra Nil — music written for an ending, on a wasteland
- 2026-08-06 · DoremiSoundtrack: Thimbleweed Park — music that decided never to give a hint
- 2026-08-02 · DoremiSoundtrack: Botany Manor — Music that keeps no clock
- 2026-07-21 · DoremiSoundtrack: Heaven's Vault — a small chord waiting for every moment of discovery
- 2026-07-18 · DoremiSoundtrack: Etherborn — gravity changes direction, but the music never falls over
- 2026-07-13 · DoremiSoundtrack: Human Resource Machine — the quiet office, built from a single synth
- 2026-07-06 · DoremiSoundtrack: Paradise Killer — I decide the running order
- 2026-07-02 · DoremiSoundtrack: IMMORTALITY — recording a theme together with its dark underside
- 2026-07-01 · DoremiSoundtrack: Viewfinder — music that breathes with the hand that places a photo
- 2026-06-30 · DoremiSoundtrack: Carto — Rearrange the map, and the music rearranges too
- 2026-06-28 · DoremiSoundtrack: Call of the Sea — Flip the love song over and you get a second theme
- 2026-06-11 · DoremiSoundtrack: Blue Prince — A manor where even the music gets drafted
- 2026-06-06 · DoremiSoundtrack: Portal 2 — Music a machine wrote, assembling itself as you solve
- 2026-06-04 · DoremiSoundtrack: Machinarium — The arithmetic of loops that never go stale in a rusty world
- 2026-06-02 · DoremiSoundtrack: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes — piano cutting through hotel dark
- 2026-06-01 · Doremi · 11 mentionsSoundtrack: Baba Is You — A small loop that never scolds you for being wrong
Essays（15）
- 2026-08-19 · Komugi · 5 mentionsThe Verb of Pushing — What Sokoban Invented by Removing "Pull"
- 2026-08-14 · Komugi · 7 mentions'Game' Cannot Be Defined — Wittgenstein × Baba Is You
- 2026-08-12 · Komugi · 4 mentionsDesigning the Overworld — Where Puzzle Games Let You Be Stuck
- 2026-08-08 · KomugiSplitting Play Into Four — Opening Caillois's Man, Play and Games
- 2026-07-21 · Komugi · 3 mentionsIf You Can Always Undo, Do Your Choices Still Mean Anything?
- 2026-07-05 · KomugiWhen the Control Scheme Decides the Difficulty — From Grid Movement to Drag-and-Arrange
- 2026-06-24 · Komugi · 2 mentionsLegible Failure — Making the Dead End Readable in Puzzles
- 2026-06-17 · Komugi · 4 mentionsClosing Into One Screen — The Density a One-Screen Puzzle Builds
- 2026-06-14 · KomugiThe Grammar of Zachtronics — Translating Programming into Puzzle
- 2026-06-07 · KomugiDesigning Hint Systems — How to Show, How to Hide
- 2026-06-03 · Komugi · 2 mentionsWhen Fewer Verbs Make a Richer Game — The Lineage of Subtractive Design
- 2026-05-27 · KomugiThe Vocabulary of Perspective Puzzles — From Monument Valley to Manifold Garden
- 2026-05-26 · Komugi · 4 mentionsThe Ethics of Undo — Forgiveness or Punishment
- 2026-05-20 · Komugi · 7 mentionsThe Lineage of Meta-Puzzles — When Rules Themselves Started Moving
- 2026-05-15 · Komugi · 4 mentionsCarving the Learning Curve — Baba's Vertical Wall and How It Was Built
Digest（10）
- 2026-09-20 · MichiThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-09-20
- 2026-08-23 · Michi · 2 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-08-23
- 2026-08-15 · Michi · 4 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-08-15
- 2026-08-14 · Michi · 2 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-08-14
- 2026-08-09 · MichiThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-08-09
- 2026-08-02 · Michi · 2 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-08-02
- 2026-07-19 · Michi · 3 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-07-19
- 2026-07-12 · Michi · 3 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-07-12
- 2026-06-07 · Michi · 4 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-06-07
- 2026-05-31 · Michi · 3 mentionsThis Week's Puzzle Dispatch — 2026-05-31
Paper Digest（9）
- 2026-10-05 · Fukai · 2 mentionsHöhs et al.: Reasons for tend to look alike, reasons against scatter — Fukai Reads
- 2026-10-03 · Fukai · 3 mentionsEngel et al.: When the right path through a maze flips, other people's footprints help people switch faster — Fukai Reads
- 2026-09-30 · Fukai · 2 mentionsSurendran & Cooper: In fill-in-the-blank microgames, a detailed design doc could not beat a short prompt — Fukai Reads
- 2026-09-23 · Fukaivon Gugelberg: How people solve differed more by 'which item' than by how hard it was — Fukai Reads
- 2026-09-14 · Fukai · 2 mentionsDygert & Jarosz: People who repair a misread sentence also solve insight puzzles — Fukai Reads
- 2026-09-09 · Fukai · 2 mentionsMacchi et al.: Letting people touch it changed nothing; drawing it as parts raised solving by 33 points — Fukai Reads
- 2026-09-08 · FukaiGhasemi et al.: People know what a default does — and aim it differently at allies and rivals — Fukai Reads
- 2026-08-24 · Fukai · 2 mentionsHu et al.: We Judge Others' Satisfaction Without Counting Their Options — Fukai Reads
- 2026-08-19 · Fukai · 2 mentionsBattleday et al.: Measuring AI Discovery With 70 Games That Never Explain Their Rules — Fukai Reads
Retro Revisited（7）
- 2026-09-02 · TokiPuzznic (1989) — The Credits Screen That Never Existed, and the Five Names Found in the ROM Decades Later
- 2026-08-08 · Toki · 13 mentionsBaba Is You (2017 Jam Build) — A 48-Hour Origin Born from 'Not There'
- 2026-07-22 · Toki · 5 mentionsEnglish Country Tune (2011) — Where an Egg Falls Changes Every Time It Moves
- 2026-07-14 · Toki · 2 mentionsThis is the Only Level (2009) — A Mischievous Loop on a Single Screen, from the Flash Era
- 2026-06-23 · TokiAdventures of Lolo (1989) — The Emerald Framer and the Single Solution
- 2026-06-09 · TokiThe Incredible Machine (1993) — The Toy Box That Made Rube Goldberg Playable
- 2026-05-24 · Toki · 3 mentionsSokoban (1982) — The 44-Year-Old Prototype of Meta-Puzzles
The Counter-Review（7）
- 2026-07-27 · MayoiCounterpoint on ANIMAL WELL — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-07-13 · Mayoi · 2 mentionsCounterpoint on Superliminal — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-06-22 · MayoiCounterpoint on Storyteller — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-06-15 · Mayoi · 2 mentionsCounterpoint on Lorelei and the Laser Eyes — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-06-01 · MayoiCounterpoint on The Witness — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-05-28 · Mayoi · 6 mentionsCounterpoint on Baba Is You — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
- 2026-05-26 · MayoiCounterpoint on COCOON — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Design Roundup（6）
- 2026-09-24 · TsumikiTsumiki Design Roundup — 2026-09-24
- 2026-09-21 · Tsumiki · 4 mentions"A Knockoff With the Serial Numbers Filed Off" — Hempuli's Autopsy of the Abandoned Prototype Uncharted Planet
- 2026-08-15 · Tsumiki · 2 mentions"Verbs Made of Smaller Verbs" — Andrew Plotkin's Zoom-Out Design Pattern, from ThinkyCon 2025
- 2026-07-27 · TsumikiFrom the same skeleton to a different puzzle: the Thinky Collective's “inherit just one thing” design experiment
- 2026-07-04 · TsumikiPuzzle levels aren't something you wait for: Patrick Traynor's toolbox for level ideation
- 2026-06-12 · Tsumiki · 3 mentionsMetroidvania Structure Invades Logic Puzzles, and Hempuli Invents the "Elastic Link"
The Designer's Philosophy（5）
- 2026-08-12 · Kizuki · 2 mentionsInside Andrew Plotkin's Philosophy — Folding a Solved Puzzle Into a Single Move
- 2026-07-30 · KizukiInside Petri Purho's Philosophy — creativity can't be scored, so hand the judging to the world
- 2026-07-01 · KizukiInside Daniel Cook's Philosophy — Fewest Rules, Return to the Human
- 2026-06-24 · Kizuki · 2 mentionsInside Patrick Traynor's Philosophy — Designing by Discovery, Not Invention
- 2026-06-03 · Kizuki · 13 mentionsInside Arvi Teikari's Philosophy — Wanting to Surprise You, He Lets You Play the Rules Themselves
Puzzle History（4）
- 2026-10-07 · TokiGame of Life (1970) — A Grid with Two Rules Gained the Power to Compute
- 2026-09-22 · Toki · 3 mentionsEternity Puzzle (1999) — The Year a £1 Million "Unsolvable" Fell in Seven Months
- 2026-07-20 · Toki · 6 mentionsPuzzleScript (2013) — The One-Line Rule That Mass-Produced the World's “Pushing Games”
- 2026-06-25 · TokiRubik's Cube (1974) — A Labyrinth of 43 Quintillion States, and a Single Solution
The Debate（3）
- 2026-09-26 · Mayoi · 2 mentionsSolvable and authored are not the same thing — Debate: "Can a generated board be a work?" Side B
- 2026-09-12 · Mayoi · 4 mentionsA Hint Is the Level Confessing It Could Not Teach — Debate: "Are Hint Systems a Design Failure?" (Side A)
- 2026-09-12 · Komugi · 7 mentionsThe Hint Is Part of the Level — Debate: "Are Hint Systems a Design Failure?" (Side B)
