The Making Of... Baba Is You

How rebellious thinking informed the cleverest puzzle game in years

- Chris Schilling

As a game that encourages you to break or rewrite its rules, it’s fitting that the idea for Baba Is You should have come about under strictly controlled conditions. Arvi ‘Hempuli’ Teikari arrived at Nordic Game Jam in April 2017 intending to work on pre-existing projects. When the theme for the jam (“not there”) was announced, Teikari wasn’t particularly struck by it. But, partly inspired by his affinity for puzzle games such as Snakebird and Stephen’s Sausage Roll, he suddenly had an epiphany: what if the word ‘not’ could somehow be used to defy the laws of nature? What if a block of ice could somehow survive contact with a pool of lava?

“The initial idea was kind of like this,” he says. “Things have their own intrinsic rules, but you can disable those intrinsic rules by saying something is ‘not’ something. But then when I started prototyping, I realized it makes more sense if nothing actually has intrinsic rules – it’s much cooler that way. So that’s what I went with.” From then on, the pieces fell into place. The theme had been announced on Friday evening, with Teikari’s idea coming pretty soon afterward. On Saturday night, he began prototyping the game. By midday on Sunday, he’d built 14 stages. Baba Is You subsequently won the jam – and that version of the game is still freely available on itch.io.