Disclaimer: While this demake does contain an introduction level for each new element, I would highly recommend you play the original game before this! Because the demake is a lot shorter than the original, the difficulty ramps up faster than it probably should.
Controls
Arrows - Move
X/V - Undo
C/Z - Idle
R - Restart level
T - Title screen
Levels
There are 4 "worlds" containing 8 levels each, adding up to 32 levels in total.
Save Data
Your progress will be saved automatically. It will keep track of which levels you've unlocked, which one you were currently on, and your time. You can clear your save data from the pause menu.
Visibility
Since some text can be hard to read depending on the background, there is an option in the pause menu to disable text darkening whenever a piece of text isn't part of a sentence.
Credits
Baba Is You - By Hempuli (Arvi Teikari)
Baba Is You Demake - By ooooggll (me)
Playtesting - The Baba Is You Discord
PICO-8 - By Lexaloffle
Making of Baba Is You Demake
This project started over a year ago, in a different form. Originally it was called Ba Is Yo, as I was using a larger text size that only allowed for two letters per word (the rest of the word had to be extrapolated by the player). I got pretty far into this project but ran into severe lag issues which killed my motivation. I also got a little ambitious with some of the features, namely the fact that I tried to implement WORD. A few months later, I restarted basically from scratch, with much better optimizations in place. I also managed to get condition-type text working with the text interpreter! The last few optimizations were related to autotiling and didn't actually happen until the last minute, for some reason. I'm really happy with how smoothly it runs now though.
Updates:
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hey, nice demake.
i didn't knew the original game.
i think the mechanics is not working 100%. objects change sometimes and don't change back. i changed the rock to lava and it didn't change back at level 06, i put rock is win in the level 08 it didn't work.
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@nicegame Perhaps you don't know how the mechanics are meant to work considering you haven't played the original game? On level 6 the lava shouldn't change back to a rock just by breaking the sentence. You'd need to do "lava is rock" to put it back. And on level 8 making the rock win probably didn't "work" because rock is also push, making it so you couldn't stand on it.
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yeah, maybe.
oh, now i understand the rock issue in level 8. it has two functions hehe
in level 6 i put the sentence back together and the rock didn't change again, but in this case don't make much sense it return to push after it turned to lava.
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Can someone give me some tips on level 16?
I have been struggling for 2 days.
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@Kenta Saito that level is based on "Tiny Pond" from Baba Is You, so you could look up the solution for that if you want. If you just need a hint:
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This is just simply amazing.
Some of the levels are just so difficult, but when you do beat them, there is such a feeling of achievement. I spent so long on level 10 before I managed to get through it. I almost danced about the room when I did.
A couple of points: you said in your description that there is an option in the pause menu to disable text darkening. I just can't find this. On level 10, I think the green thing is a hedge but I can't make out what the text is meant to be.
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Absolutely fantastic game remake. Currently stuck at level 24 but it’s not the 1st time a level seems impossible, so I’ll go back to it later with hopefully fresh eyes. Never had to use the idle key the entire time so far. I suspect some rule like « skull is kill » is missing, leading to trivial solution for the level with the robot.
Very impressed that tiles are readable at 8x8 pixels, and levels are challenging at 16x16 tiles. Seems you successfully folded the game into the pico-8 box without any spare room anywhere.
EDIT: posting this somehow erased my progress. Maybe cartdata is only written when exiting to the menu and it never got written because I did all 24 first levels in one go ?
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Can "Not" be used in front of a statement? I thought it could, so what am I doing wrong on level 20?
Hidden minor spoilers for level 20:
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@phil whoops, I had the darken text menuitem all there, but was accidentally overriding it with another menuitem! It should be fixed now.
Also, you can indeed put "not" before a statement, but it functions differently.
@RealShadowCaster Yep, I totally missed that "skull is kill" rule! It's there now, at least.
Cartdata is written to each time you load a level. I've had an issue with it once or twice, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's not a problem on my part but instead something with how cartdata works when running a game in the browser? If you press ` in immediate mode, it will unlock all levels, so you don't have to do them again (not sure why this doesn't work in the browser either.)
Edit: I've changed the ` keybind to "U" which should now work in the browser.
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@RealShadowCaste Lemme know if you figure it out. It's easy enough to ROCK IS KEY and open the door, but then I don't have a rock to push into the river to cross it to the flag. I can take the remining works and push them across the river into the "IS" of FLAG IS WIN, but that doesn't go anything. No idea what to do.
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@joealarson, @RealShadowCaster Level 24 is based on "Skull House" in case you want to look up the solution. I'll give a vague hint or two if you want.
Hint 1:
Hint 2:
P.S. RealShadowCaster- I can't guarantee what caused your crash, but I think I may have fixed it in the latest update.
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@ooooggll Did you change it? It didn't have an AND before. Was it unsolvable without that?
EDIT: The AND wasn't necessary.
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Please tell me that's a bug. That "solution" makes no sense. I see no reason why skull is stop would not apply for flying text pushed indirectly.
On the bright side, no more infinite loop when two rocks on the same square push a text when "rock is you" and "rock is push" are active.
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@RealShadowCaster oh dear. that's definitely a bug, not the intended solution 😅
edit: hopefully fixed now.
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The skull is stop bug is fixed, but the crash with "rock is you" and "rock is push" is back :(
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@RealShadowCaster funny story, I uploaded the new version and even put it in the changelog but forgot to insert the new cart into the post.
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No more crashes or indirect pushing over stop blocks, thanks.
I suspect there's still a minor renaming bug :
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In this screenshot, I was able to separate the two rocks. Even though it looks like one moved while the other stayed, I think behind the scene, one moved then the other one failed to push the 1st one and stayed in place, and the animation only played after all of this has been resolved behind the scene.
The reason I think it's a minor bug is that it breaks symmetry. What if it was a baba and a rock ? witch one should move and witch one should not ? Some games like 5 steps steve maintain symmetry at all cost, so for example, if two rocks try to move into the same square at the same time, none will move, witch looks pretty weird but guaranties that the player can anticipate what will happen. I wonder, in the original, if robot is move and robot is push and both will try to move to the same square, what happens ?
Oh, and I finally figured out L24: because I was thinking about symmetry and two transformation rules would have to apply at the same time in the name of symmetry even if it is counter intuitive.
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Finished the last level but didn't use the bottom left broken "love is not push". After winning, undo did weird things.
All in all, a wonderful de-make. The introduction of new elements in the last levels felt a bit rushed as we didn't really get to play with the new mechanics much.
How about making a level editor ?
When called without parameter, it would act as level editor.
If you win the tested game, you'd be rewarded with a URL in the clipboard calling the editor with the level data as parameter. These links could be posted in the BBS for others to play.
These links would also be pastable in the editor as a way to load them for further modification.
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Loved the original and this is a fantastic demake. Nicely done!
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Baba is cheese
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I see you changed the final level to stop me from using uninteded solution.
What do you think of this :p ?
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Great demake. I can't press R on mobile web player or Miyoo Mini Plus, can we get circle to restart level after death? Doesn't seem to be used for anything else. Thanks!
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I've been making baba levels that re-implements the logic of other puzzle games.
In the screen shot, there's a playable 4x4 level of step-over maze by Andrea Gilbert for example.
Wondering if/how you think I should post them.
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@RealShadowCaster wow, that's pretty cool! of course, feel free to post this as a cart either in the comments or as a separate post. If you post it separately, credit would be appreciated :) I'm excited to try it!
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Do excuse me, but I’m stuck on level 9. Since the phrases “Wall is stop” and “Skul is kill” are blocked off by walls, I think that I need to create a new win condition by pushing phrase parts and the rock down past the skulls, but I haven’t got enough parts.
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Edit: Argh! Ninja-ed by @ooooggll !
@Retro_Pup_Pico_8 I can help here as its one of the levels I have actually managed to complete! I'll spoiler everything and give gradually more helpful clues.
Complete solution:
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Got it, thanks. I knew what needed to happen—I just overthought it accidentally. (I’m autistic, so I overthink stuff a lot—just how my brain works.)
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Baba IS Code
I won't have much time to do pico-8 in the following weeks so I thought I'd post here my WIP of Baba is Code.
L1 simple maze
L2 sokoban v1 (original 1st level of DOS version)
L3 killer escape
L4 step over maze
L5 sokoban v2 (hard level)
L6-32 hasn't been modded yet, suggestions of other puzzle games to implement welcome.
@ooooggll, WITH seems fully implemented an not used in any level of your levels ?
It's super powerful for what I'm trying to make, thanks to it, sokoban v2 covers every possible case except if baba starts next to love.
During debugging, the wrong sentence "baba with not water is win" is accepted, what does it do ?
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@RealShadowCaster WITH is used exclusively in level 30. Also, I'm not certain what your intended result was with the sentence "baba with not water is win", but I'm assuming what you want to do is "baba not with water is win". Putting "not" before a condition will invert the condition, whereas putting it before a noun selects all objects but the target. (By the way, you might have noticed already, but ALL is fully implemented too. It's never used anywhere but it should work for the most part.)
Also, I've beaten the first couple of levels, and it's fun so far. I'm excited to see what the rest of the levels are :)
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baba with water is win makes baba win if there is at least one water on the level.
baba with not water is win I would have expected that baba would be win if at least one non water tile exists. Since baba is a non water, I guess it simplifies to baba is win ? Or maybe "with" implies two tiles, so you'd need 1 baba and another (potentially another baba) non water tile ?
Instead it crashes the game.
And yes, what I wanted to write was
baba not with water is win
That sentence thankfully works well.
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@ooooggll, how hard would it be to add a CLIK keyword ?
A new way to skip your turn would be to click with the mouse in a square. This would create a click object in the square, then rules would apply, and remaining click objects would disappear.
A lot of mouse puzzles could be re-created just with that extra keyword.
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