Kinda jealous of all the people who seem to enjoy this so much. I just feel like and idiot playing this and after 3,5 hours of playing I am completely stuck in every direction. I don't 'get' some of the new mechanics and rules and I feel like the game does a poor job of explaining them after a few worlds.
Can somebody who has gone through the majority of the game or beaten it clarify something for me? I have 137 flowers collected and have passed through (number of worlds I've seen)...ten... worlds. Beating enough levels on each to pass all of them and completing 5 of them. I've also done the levels on the map screen including (late game spoilers)levels 8,9, and 10. Including making level 9 Baba to get to the corner island and getting the Orb, and then also actually beating level 9 which has made it purple. I've also beaten the level required to see the credits (though I did that way earlier in the game). My question is, I've beaten 137 and can count 26 in the worlds that I haven't done. This adds up to 163 levels, but the store page says there are over 200. Is there some condition I can meet to unlock a huge amount of new levels?
I've begun playing after reading how great this game is. I love the concept!
Sadly, I'm stuck at Lake-4: Pillard Yard, and it's driving me craaaaazy. It can't be that hard, I'm fairly sure the solution is obvious but I can't see it.
What yesterday finally taught me is that, yeah, if you get stuck on a level for what feels like too long, don't force yourself to sticking with that one thing until you beat it, go ahead and jump around.
I'd been stuck on Deep Pool for around two days of idle attempts before finally figuring out a rules-combo that let me beat it. It felt great to finally get that one done after so much time used up. After moving on from that and finishing up the rest of Fall, I finally moved on to Ruins.....where the mechanic that took me forever to figure out for Deep Pool is immediately used multiple times within the first few levels in simpler form such that, had I done any of Ruins first, I would have most likely realized what to do to solve Deep Pool waaaay sooner than I actually did. Things for the most part have been fairly smooth ever since.
You can really get a sense in this of escalation with how you're expected to layer rules, and as more modifiers are introduced. It's all so good though.
I just figured it out actually. The solution to beating the level and the solution to doing flag are basically identical lol...
Edit: That is to say, I managed to beat the level awhile ago, but for some reason I didn't follow through and move the flag block around afterwards! I was blinded by the allure of flag is win.
Late late game spoilers: I SPELLED OUT MOVE AND IT WORKED OH MY GOD
Kinda jealous of all the people who seem to enjoy this so much. I just feel like and idiot playing this and after 3,5 hours of playing I am completely stuck in every direction. I don't 'get' some of the new mechanics and rules and I feel like the game does a poor job of explaining them after a few worlds.
In a way, Baba is a bit similar to BotW in that it explains very little. You have to use the sandbox and play around with the words to discover and understand the mechanics.
(BTW, the attribute I misunderstood early on in the game was "SINK".)
This game is missing the "aha" moment after the long "I'm an idiot" phase. I've had to look up every solution so far and it's always been "wait, what?"
Also this is secretly a game about pushing blocks, which is like the worst puzzle type.
This game is missing the "aha" moment after the long "I'm an idiot" phase. I've had to look up every solution so far and it's always been "wait, what?"
Also this is secretly a game about pushing blocks, which is like the worst puzzle type.
Cleared up to 109 last night; tons left to do, as I still haven't unlocked the route to the top-left area or the bottom-right island stage (which looks like a stage; presumably the true-ending stage). On the Switch, the number display on the top right looks bugged (it reads "1 9" rather than "109") but it says something about this game that I don't know if this is a fault in the UI or actually part of some overarching meta-puzzle I haven't understood yet.
Also finally popped the end credits, which are available quite early in the game, as most of you know by now. I had been putting it off. There is a neat personal coincidence here that I didn't notice until I started writing this post: 109 was also the number of shrines I completed in BotW before I finally decided to do the first tutorial quest off the Plateau. I'm not stuck or anything, but at this point I had definitely slowed down and exhausted the low-hanging fruit that I could grasp and solve in a few simple moves without too much planning or experimentation.
The B-button mapping continues to drive me a little nuts for every bit of standard functionality like "close menu" or "back" or "zoom out one map level".
Okay, I've got to talk about this, and I'm not sure if it has been discussed already as I haven't been clicking any spoiler tags that aren't explicitly marked as content I've already cleared, although searching the thread for the puzzle title doesn't turn up anything. This is about the puzzle that comes right after that one numerically, Hostile Environment.
I'm not looking for hints, but this is interesting enough that I want to step through my thought process here, in case anybody else is at this point.
So the LEVEL IS BABA puzzle, 09 on the main world map, spawns Baba on the map, where the conditions BABA IS YOU and FLAG IS WIN hold in the bottom right corner. Naturally, the first thought this provokes is that another level should be resolved with LEVEL IS FLAG. And the text-object FLAG is right there in 10, Hostile Environment, where it appears in two places.
To me it looked very much like 10 should be solved not by clicking FLAG IS WIN into place and touching the flag, but by setting up LEVEL IS FLAG. And try as I might, I can't see how to make this happen because the positioning of the word FLAG is so inflexible. I found it quite straightforward to resolve 10 as LEVEL IS KEKE and spawn Keke on the world map, and I'm also able to move FLAG IS WIN into position (but at the cost of not having a flag left to touch).
Here, then, I can't produce any result more interesting than LEVEL IS KEKE, but I'm not convinced this does anything and I think it's a dead end. And one of the reasons I think it isn't right is because 09 could be solved as LEVEL IS KEY, spawning a key on the map that does nothing, which is also how I did it at first when I was just fooling around with the possibilities. And if you spawned the key, you could go back to the level until you do it "right" with LEVEL IS BABA. Once Baba is on the map, you can't revisit 09 (which is why I don't remember the exact title).
Transforming 10 into Keke still lets me reenter the level. So I'm convinced the solution I'm supposed to generate here is LEVEL IS FLAG, but I just don't see how to do it. There might be something critical I'm missing, though, as I've encountered a large number of puzzles that I haven't solved yet (particularly involving tricks with MOVE, which are sometimes tricky to plan out) and perhaps I haven't figured out an essential technique. Or maybe LEVEL IS FLAG is something that doesn't happen in this level at all, but in another one I can't reach yet, like the tantalizing island in the bottom right that looks so much like a true-ending exit stage.
Again, not looking for answers; just walking through this highly compelling moment in the game, one I'm sure to remember no matter how it turns out.
I'm about 50 levels in. Question about which world to start next. I notice that there's usually a specific order that ramps up the new keywords most naturally.
Cleared up to 109 last night; tons left to do, as I still haven't unlocked the route to the top-left area or the bottom-right island stage (which looks like a stage; presumably the true-ending stage). On the Switch, the number display on the top right looks bugged (it reads "1 9" rather than "109") but it says something about this game that I don't know if this is a fault in the UI or actually part of some overarching meta-puzzle I haven't understood yet.
Also finally popped the end credits, which are available quite early in the game, as most of you know by now. I had been putting it off. There is a neat personal coincidence here that I didn't notice until I started writing this post: 109 was also the number of shrines I completed in BotW before I finally decided to do the first tutorial quest off the Plateau. I'm not stuck or anything, but at this point I had definitely slowed down and exhausted the low-hanging fruit that I could grasp and solve in a few simple moves without too much planning or experimentation.
The B-button mapping continues to drive me a little nuts for every bit of standard functionality like "close menu" or "back" or "zoom out one map level".
Okay, I've got to talk about this, and I'm not sure if it has been discussed already as I haven't been clicking any spoiler tags that aren't explicitly marked as content I've already cleared, although searching the thread for the puzzle title doesn't turn up anything. This is about the puzzle that comes right after that one numerically, Hostile Environment.
I'm not looking for hints, but this is interesting enough that I want to step through my thought process here, in case anybody else is at this point.
So the LEVEL IS BABA puzzle, 09 on the main world map, spawns Baba on the map, where the conditions BABA IS YOU and FLAG IS WIN hold in the bottom right corner. Naturally, the first thought this provokes is that another level should be resolved with LEVEL IS FLAG. And the text-object FLAG is right there in 10, Hostile Environment, where it appears in two places.
To me it looked very much like 10 should be solved not by clicking FLAG IS WIN into place and touching the flag, but by setting up LEVEL IS FLAG. And try as I might, I can't see how to make this happen because the positioning of the word FLAG is so inflexible. I found it quite straightforward to resolve 10 as LEVEL IS KEKE and spawn Keke on the world map, and I'm also able to move FLAG IS WIN into position (but at the cost of not having a flag left to touch).
Here, then, I can't produce any result more interesting than LEVEL IS KEKE, but I'm not convinced this does anything and I think it's a dead end. And one of the reasons I think it isn't right because 09 could be solved as LEVEL IS KEY, spawning a key on the map that does nothing, which is also how I did it at first when I was just fooling around with the possibilities. And if you spawned the key, you could go back to the level until you do it "right" with LEVEL IS BABA. Once Baba is on the map, you can't remember 09 (which is why I don't remember the exact title).
Transforming 10 into Keke still lets me reenter the level. So I'm convinced the solution I'm supposed to generate here is LEVEL IS FLAG, but I just don't see how to do it. There might be something critical I'm missing, though, as I've encountered a large number of puzzles that I haven't solved yet (particularly involving tricks with MOVE, which are sometimes tricky to plan out) and perhaps I haven't figured out an essential technique. Or maybe LEVEL IS FLAG is something that doesn't happen in this level at all, but in another one I can't reach yet, like the tantalizing island in the bottom right that looks so much like a true-ending exit stage.
Again, not looking for answers; just walking through this highly compelling moment in the game, one I'm sure to remember no matter how it turns out.
Just so you're not wasting your time, in terms of your question as to whether the level you're referring to is the one you actually need to do what you're trying to do:
Level is Keke is not the final result of Level 10 in the Overworld
Can somebody who has gone through the majority of the game or beaten it clarify something for me? I have 137 flowers collected and have passed through (number of worlds I've seen)...ten... worlds. Beating enough levels on each to pass all of them and completing 5 of them. I've also done the levels on the map screen including (late game spoilers)levels 8,9, and 10. Including making level 9 Baba to get to the corner island and getting the Orb, and then also actually beating level 9 which has made it purple. I've also beaten the level required to see the credits (though I did that way earlier in the game). My question is, I've beaten 137 and can count 26 in the worlds that I haven't done. This adds up to 163 levels, but the store page says there are over 200. Is there some condition I can meet to unlock a huge amount of new levels?
You've made Baba a level so you can move around the map, which works because of the "Baba is You" rule placed in the bottom right corner of the map. There's another rule there.
I looked up the solution to a level that had me stumped and I feel disappointed in myself. I had all the parts, I just need to combine two solutions I tried into one.
Without looking up answers, I have managed to get over a hundred levels completed, one secret orb, access to some of the unusual worlds, and I got the regular ending. Some of these levels are getting super tough so I don't know if I'm going to go for 100% completion or give up before then, but this is one awesome game.
Just so you're not wasting your time, in terms of your question as to whether the level you're referring to is the one you actually need to do what you're trying to do:
Level is Keke is not the final result of Level 10 in the Overworld
Figured it out shortly after writing that post. I missed something painfully obvious about the semantics of WEAK that I definitely already knew from past experience, and overcomplicated things for myself.
This is how the game goes. Much of the time, if I'm stuck on something it's actually because I'm overthinking it, and many of my "aha!" moments have taken the form, "Wait, why don't I just do this?" It definitely helps to take some time away so I don't get trapped in a particular line of thinking. Several times already, I've gone back to puzzles I skipped earlier only for a whole swathe of them to fall within minutes.
Now that I'm far enough to safely click on a few of these spoiler tags: that's the first thing I tried as well, and yes, if you're the kind of player who's deep enough in the game to make it to that point, the game understands you perfectly. Such a rewarding moment, and it isn't even a reward.
I beat Further Fields but it wasn't elegant. I had to create quite the contraption to
convert the vertical Keke is You to a horizontal configuration. The game seems to resolve pushes of blocks by multiple actors in a pre-determined order, so I had to figure that out with the three Babas by pure experimentation.
Satisfying, though.
Edit: well now I see a much simpler solution. Oh well! Still kind of proud of my nonsense.
Up to 130 now. Progress started pouring in tonight; just needed to crack a few critical unlocks of zones and pathways. The solutions seem to come in bursts. I'll frequently look at something I set aside for later a few days ago, blow through it in minutes, and have no memory of what gave me trouble in the first place.
Made it as far as Depths-3 (Crushers). It took me rather long to work out something so simple as figuring out how to join the world map cursor with Baba for all the functionality that provides—stepping off the guided paths, visiting the bottom-right island, replaying the LEVEL IS BABA levels for the internal win conditions (finally and quickly did it for world map level 09, Fragile Existence, a highly satisfying solution in itself; still have to solve ???-7, Turn the Corner). Honestly, I find joining Baba (or whatever IS YOU) with the selection cursor on the maps that double as puzzles to be a bit inelegant; I think I now understand how it works, but it took me some time to find the method for pulling it off consistently. It was a bit fussy in Depths just to carry myself back to stages I had already cleared.
This is a minor complaint, though, while the rest of the surrounding game has only been getting better and better without just overwhelming the player with more moving parts and bigger problem spaces, at least not most of the time. That approach to escalation wouldn't suit this game very well; instead, each successive zone has felt pretty focused.
After being stuck at Evaporating River for days, I looked up the solution and I'm glad I did.
I would have only found the adequate mechanic to solve the level by chance or mistake.
But I'm taking good note of it.
I get why Baba is great, but Baba is definitely not for me I'm afraid. I get to a point where I'm even afraid to boot the game just to be stuck 30-40 minutes on a single puzzle. I had a good 50-ish puzzles at least, so there's that.
Now that I'm far enough to safely click on a few of these spoiler tags: that's the first thing I tried as well, and yes, if you're the kind of player who's deep enough in the game to make it to that point, the game understands you perfectly. Such a rewarding moment, and it isn't even a reward.
I tried to create "L IS M" in the hope that the (single-tile) LOVE would turn into MOVE. No luck. I suspect that's so they don't need to work out what a WAMM is!
In order to get back into a level that's been transformed into something else, you need to put the cursor on it. You also can't enter levels if they're positioned over a dotted line.
There's an implicit rule that level is stop, much like how text is push. However, there is no such rule about "cursor is you", since the cursor can't interact with objects in the same way "you" can.
Up to 130 now. Progress started pouring in tonight; just needed to crack a few critical unlocks of zones and pathways. The solutions seem to come in bursts. I'll frequently look at something I set aside for later a few days ago, blow through it in minutes, and have no memory of what gave me trouble in the first place.
One particular late, late, late level made me immensely grateful I was playing on a handheld.
Depths-2 (Exercise Hall), of course, with its screen-rotation mechanic.
This is the ultimate go away and come back game. Often I've been stumped on a puzzle and found after a nights rest and a fresh set of eyes a solution will be really obvious.
I beat Further Fields but it wasn't elegant. I had to create quite the contraption to
convert the vertical Keke is You to a horizontal configuration. The game seems to resolve pushes of blocks by multiple actors in a pre-determined order, so I had to figure that out with the three Babas by pure experimentation.
Satisfying, though.
Edit: well now I see a much simpler solution. Oh well! Still kind of proud of my nonsense.
Haha I actually did the exact same thing for Further Fields
(converting to horizontal)
and knew there had to be something simpler but I just knew my way would work if I could get it right. I took a screenshot of the setup I made just in case I ever needed to do it again.
EDIT: Nevermind no hints needed once I posted I figured it out immediately of course.
Very late game query, regarding a level named "BOOBY TRAP". If you've not played that, don't read on!
I'm getting a bit fed up of completing Booby Trap. I've managed to get three different things out of the level so far: BABA, FLAG (with BELT, although I can't think of a use for that on the map) and TEXT (so LEVEL on map). First question, I guess, is whether there's anything *more* of note that can be extracted from here. Getting both TEXT/FLAG simultaneously would be great, but I can't see a way to do that; it may actually be impossible.
Further context, up to level 10 in that same map:
I'm currently trying to get to level 11 - I'm in the region around CURSOR IS, and have just released a BABA from 10, but at this point I could really do with another FLAG; I completed Mutual Feelings with BABA/FLAG jointly, so that gives one to work with. I thought I was all clever getting LEVEL out of booby trap, only to get a nasty surprise when I attempted LEVEL IS PUSH AND OPEN!
So I'm currently in a situation where I have a BABA in the left chamber with CURSOR IS, a BABA in the middle chamber with either a FLAG, a LEVEL or another BABA, and both a BABA and a FLAG in the chamber that contains the lengthy strings.
I have an inkling how I'd proceed, but just as a reassurance:
Is there anything else of note I can get out of the levels I've turned into things? I think I've exhausted all reasonable possibilities - except for the nagging doubt of TEXT/FLAG from Booby Trap, but it's probably worth knowing if there's something useful I've missed in what's already complete.
Seems like you really don't understand how the mechanics work. What is an example of a level where even after watching a video you still don't understand why that works?
Very late game query, regarding a level named "BOOBY TRAP". If you've not played that, don't read on!
I'm getting a bit fed up of completing Booby Trap. I've managed to get three different things out of the level so far: BABA, FLAG (with BELT, although I can't think of a use for that on the map) and TEXT (so LEVEL on map). First question, I guess, is whether there's anything *more* of note that can be extracted from here. Getting both TEXT/FLAG simultaneously would be great, but I can't see a way to do that; it may actually be impossible.
Further context, up to level 10 in that same map:
I'm currently trying to get to level 11 - I'm in the region around CURSOR IS, and have just released a BABA from 10, but at this point I could really do with another FLAG; I completed Mutual Feelings with BABA/FLAG jointly, so that gives one to work with. I thought I was all clever getting LEVEL out of booby trap, only to get a nasty surprise when I attempted LEVEL IS PUSH AND OPEN!
So I'm currently in a situation where I have a BABA in the left chamber with CURSOR IS, a BABA in the middle chamber with either a FLAG, a LEVEL or another BABA, and both a BABA and a FLAG in the chamber that contains the lengthy strings.
I have an inkling how I'd proceed, but just as a reassurance:
Is there anything else of note I can get out of the levels I've turned into things? I think I've exhausted all reasonable possibilities - except for the nagging doubt of TEXT/FLAG from Booby Trap, but it's probably worth knowing if there's something useful I've missed in what's already complete.
That bloody level is the bane of my existence. You've solved all the puzzles in that level, which means it's only repetitive backtracking from this point on.
This game is missing the "aha" moment after the long "I'm an idiot" phase. I've had to look up every solution so far and it's always been "wait, what?"
Also this is secretly a game about pushing blocks, which is like the worst puzzle type.
Kinda jealous of all the people who seem to enjoy this so much. I just feel like and idiot playing this and after 3,5 hours of playing I am completely stuck in every direction. I don't 'get' some of the new mechanics and rules and I feel like the game does a poor job of explaining them after a few worlds.
I also felt this way at first, but once you get the mechanics by trying things randomly it becomes really enjoyable, at least for me. :D I think the lack of explanation is nice in a way that you actually learn by trying, and when things are unexpected it's surprising! Maybe it's not for everyone, but I'd say give it a chance. Sleep it off for a few days and you'd somehow just find the solutions come to you.
This game is missing the "aha" moment after the long "I'm an idiot" phase. I've had to look up every solution so far and it's always been "wait, what?"
Also this is secretly a game about pushing blocks, which is like the worst puzzle type.
It's clearly a block game, no secret about that :D I remember being really fond of Sokoban and Bloxorz when I was a kid. If you think block games are the worst, then why did you get this game? :o
This is the ultimate go away and come back game. Often I've been stumped on a puzzle and found after a nights rest and a fresh set of eyes a solution will be really obvious.
This is so, so true, and has happened to me more times than I can count. I full-cleared multiple areas in quick succession yesterday because one erstwhile roadblock fell after another. All of these were puzzles that were at the extreme end of totally separate zones, so it's not like they fell to an identical spark of insight or a shared mechanical trick. The main thing they had in common was a fresh set of eyes.
It happens unusually often here, relative to my experience to other puzzle games. And I think I know why. Baba Is You, far more than other games, subtly lures you into trapping yourself in your own tunnel vision. Look at the undo mechanic, for instance—a convenience that I think we'll all agree is absolutely necessary for a game like this to be playable. It's easy to lean on it too heavily, step back a few moves (because you don't want to throw out the work you already did to get your pieces in a favourable position), and lock yourself into a narrow picture of how the solution is supposed to look, when what you really need to do is start fresh. (Even with a full restart, if you've been working on a puzzle for an hour, it's easy to fall into the trap of reenacting all of your early moves to reach a mid-puzzle setup you already have in mind.) Or look at the extra "hard mode" variant puzzles: most of them are pretty simple, but by removing one crutch or moving one critical block from a puzzle you've already solved, one subconsciously falls into the trap of thinking about the modification as an inconvenience you have to get around, when the real solution takes a wildly different shape. Even if you know you are supposed to be looking for a solution with a different shape, it's hard to conceive of the puzzle in isolation. So the best thing to do is step away.
I'm up to 156 solutions now with zero outside help, and I'm so relieved I stuck to my guns and didn't seek assistance. In nearly every case, I would have been appalled to miss something so obvious. And I know that for a fact, because it's already how it felt to break through the "hardest" puzzles within minutes after a few days away. It's quite typical for the working solutions to be much simpler than the convoluted efforts I spent too much time trying to force. Quite often, I had the right solution in mind conceptually, but couldn't see a simple piece movement to get me there.
This is why I would strongly discourage others from succumbing to impatience. You're not just ruining the current puzzle that is the sticking point, but wrecking your future experience with the game by making all the later puzzles that much harder. Visualizing the piece manipulation takes hands-on practice.
