Baba Is You gets a mind-boggling free Solitaire spin-off
Can someone please tell me what’s going on?
Baba Is You dev Hempuli has taken that game’s puzzle transforming mechanics and translated them into a form of Solitaire. Dubbed Babataire EX – nice – the game bases its suits on four of the endearing little creatures from Baba Is You. There’s good ol’ Baba, of course, joined by Keke, Fofo and Jiji. Hempuli only seems to have begun the project earlier this month, but you can already have a go for free on itch.io. If you do, then I hope you have better luck than I did understanding what exactly is going on.
Along with the bog standard suit cards, there’s another two types of rules cards to muck about with. The first are verb cards, but there’s only one of those and that’s Is. Then you’ve got four quality cards: On Any, Any Suit, Opposite, and +5. While rules cards can be stacked by their type, they can also be stacked in two types of three-word rules, such as Baba Is Keke to change suit, or Baba Is Any Suit to muck about with where cards can be stacked. Helpfully, Hempuli has added a full set of rules to guide you through your experimentation with Babataire EX.
Right, I’ll own up. I’m not great at Solitaire. I know loads of people who’re veritable grandmasters, but I would definitely not count myself among them or even on the same planet as them. I fall firmly into the grimy hordes of Minesweeper-dabbling homunculi scrabbling about on the small moon orbiting below, gazing longingly up at the many, complex stacks being swept around by invisible hands beyond my ken. So, yeah, not great at Solitaire.
Even I can appreciate that Hempuli’s trying to do something a little different with the classic game though, which is very cool indeed. You can see how the card transformation works below:
John (RPS in peace) felt Babataire’s inspiration was worth a Bestest Bests in his Baba Is You review back in 2019. “Completely wonderful. Original, inspired, challenging, and most importantly of all, that constant sense of ‘Oh no, how will I ever do this one!’ so quickly followed by, ‘I AM A GENIUS!’,” he said. “It's a very, very smart game, that has the humility to let you, the player, feel like the clever one.”
Babataire EX is free to play in your browser over on Hempuli’s itch.io page here.