If you haven’t heard of Baba Is You, grab hold of the nearest guardrail, because you’re about to be hit by a wrecking ball of descriptors. Here goes: released in 2019, Baba Is You was a mind-bending box-pushing syntax-making meta-puzzle video game by Arvi Teikari. It was hard. Famously so. Especially if you’re anything like me and not really into Sokoban-style box-pushers.

Baba Is You is now also a board game, albeit one whose pedigree doesn’t only belong to Teikari. The analog adaptation was done by Peter C. Hayward, and in many ways it feels like a riff on his abstract comedy game That Time You Killed Me. Although somehow, improbably, it’s even better — provided you have the right mind for it.

Baba Is Sometimes Confounding. In a good way.

You are Baba. Baba is a dog… sheep… cat thing. Baba likes to push boxes around a ten-by-ten grid. Baba can also pull boxes, one of the board game’s main concessions to its non-digital format. Mostly, this is to prevent everything from piling up on the edges and corners until the board has screwed inward like an ingrown toenail. Boxes can also be placed next to Baba, brought from off-map to alter the game’s progress.

You are also Keke. Or, well, your opponent is Keke. Because unlike the video game, Baba Is You: The Board Game is not a solitaire affair. This is a duel, alternating players and pairs of actions. I take two actions, split as I choose between moving Baba and placing boxes. Then you take two actions, moving Keke this time and maybe also placing boxes.

What sets this apart from any number of other games is that there is no win condition. Not right away. Your goal is “to win.” I mean, obviously. That’s why we’re playing games, isn’t it? To win? But in order to win, you must construct a way for that win to occur. For example, by placing and pushing boxes. “Rock.” That’s one such box you can place on the map. “Is Win.” That’s another. Put them next to one another and you spell out the phrase “Rock Is Win.” Now if somebody steps onto a rock, they win.

Baba Has Lots of Options. But not too many at any given time.

It doesn’t take long for this rubric to turn pretzels and loop-de-loops and barrel rolls on itself.

For one thing, there’s a lot you can do with a few basic phrases. Put “Rock” next to “Is You” and suddenly “Rock Is You.” Now instead of only moving Keke, you can also move any rock as though you were the rock. Spell out “Rock Is You” and “Rock Is Win” at the same time and you might be able to win by stepping one rock onto another rock — because you’re a rock and also rock is win. Or you could do things more simply by just spelling “Rock Is Win” and having Keke, who is you, step onto the rock. Fewer steps that way.

At the same time, fewer steps isn’t always better, because both you and your opponent are messing with the integrity of these phrases. Usually by pushing and pulling, but other tricks eventually reveal themselves as well. As a rock, maybe you push apart the phrase “Flag Is Win.” Now the flag isn’t win, so your opponent, Baba, who was one turn away from stepping on the flag, cannot win. At least not without somehow putting that phrase back together or creating another. Or by layering the game’s syntax and box-pushing puzzles over the top of each other so that your rival is checkmated into permitting your win.

Also, there are heaps of these phrases, all capable of jumbling together to create dynamic new rulesets. For example, maybe something on the board becomes “Curious.” This means that anything that moves into its row or column will cause that thing to come wandering over to see what’s snuffling about. Or perhaps Baba becomes “Thirsty,” inclined to scoot over to the river spaces at the end of each turn. Or the river decides to begin to flow downhill, potentially whisking items off the board altogether.

Sometimes these rules can have unintended consequences. Such as when a “Hot” item comes in contact with a “Melt” item, which destroys the latter. It’s possible that you will even be destroyed. You as in Baba, or you as in Keke, depending on which side you’re playing as right now. If you are something else on the board — a rock, a flag, an errant piece of syntax uplifted to temporary sentience — then you can continue to function, maybe even calling your destroyed body back onto the board, until such time as the rule is broken into pieces.

Baba Took A Wide Angle Shot.

There are three main things I would impress upon you about Baba Is You: The Board Game.

The first is that it’s incredibly funny. I mentioned that Baba recalls Hayward’s earlier effort, That Time You Killed Me, another notably funny game. Their commonalities are many. Both are short abstract games with ever-shifting rules. Both are tight two-player duels on claustrophobic boards. Both allow precisely two actions per turn, which is just enough to get something done but not enough to accomplish everything you need. Also, if played in an obnoxious manner, both can result in little I-step, you-step conundrums that aren’t especially interesting to resolve.

But where Baba Is You differs from That Time You Killed Me is crucial. These are dramatically different games in scope and process. Moves are harder to undo than those in That Time You Killed Me, with boxes usually sticking around for the duration of the match. Also, the comedy doesn’t arise from the prose. There’s none to speak of anyway. Here, Baba and Keke’s misadventures are pure slapstick. It’s the joy of assembling a mousetrap only to trigger it in your own face.

Which is also to say, the game is hard. At least it’s hard for me and the people I’ve played it with. I came into the game forearmed, having played Teikari’s original video game. But when introduced to newcomers, I found it often perplexed them. Four different opponents bounced off its systems. The combination of box-arranging and word-making is no easy thing to get a handle on.

Baba Wishes To Understand Grammar.

Then my seven-year-old requested a try. She’d watched me try it with her older sister and Summer. I figured there was no harm. She plays all sorts of games that are beyond her level, so she’s a good sport whenever something doesn’t match her expectations.

Except she took to it immediately. To her, the syntax puzzles were a joy, a constant wellspring of experimentation. The box-pushing was tougher, especially when she developed some creative interpretations of which boxes could be pulled. But making innovative new phrases became her favorite thing. She began to request it every day before school, insisting on new chapters with their punch-boards of nouns and adjectives. When we would walk to class afterward, she would bounce along, singing about the different combinations of words she had made. “Daddy, I’m floating, like Baba! Daddy, watch out, I’m gonna melt you! Daddy, the hole in the grass over there is win!” Sharing the various ways she had discovered to upset reality.

Which is another way of saying that Baba Is You doesn’t fit every brain. But when it fits, it fits with a satisfying click.

To the designer’s credit, there’s some secret sauce in the recipe… and it’s basically mayonnaise. As in, not the most exciting to talk about, but an essential splash of flavor nevertheless. The way it works is that you play a match with only a couple of keywords. Then, when that’s over, you add a new keyword and the loser gets to decide which older word is removed. This keeps the game lively and defangs the threat of losing. Rather than wagering everything on a single session, Baba Is You is played as a flight of five, seven, or possibly more matches, each building on what came before. Little metagames develop, instances where both parties want to see a keyword used to greater effect, or perhaps someone gets fed up with a Fast Baba zipping around the board and deletes the “Fast” keyword from existence altogether. It’s a dang smart way to approach the game as a whole, encouraging experimentation and risk-taking instead of putting all that weight on a single bundle of moves.

Baba Is a Perfect Outro.

Put together, Baba Is You: The Board Game becomes more than the sum of its parts. It’s a comedy game that’s genuinely thinky, a thinky game that bounces off some brains but burrows into others, and a technical achievement that always feels one step ahead of both players. When it works — and for some, that won’t happen — it’s one of the funniest, most generous titles of the year, a constant reinvention of what it means to be Baba.

A prototype copy of Baba Is You was temporarily provided by the publisher.

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