Baba Is You Walkthrough: How Rule-Pushing Works, Every Core Word & a Spoiler-Light Solution Spine for 200+ Levels

How this guide is built: Baba Is You is a game whose whole point is that it explains nothing — you learn its language by experimenting, and the joy is the click of understanding. A flat list of “step 1, step 2” answers for all 200-plus levels would spoil that, and it would also be wrong: the game was patched repeatedly and many old solutions no longer work, while most levels have several valid answers anyway. So this guide does something more useful and longer-lasting. It teaches you to read and rewrite the rules — the grammar, the full word glossary, and the dozen solving techniques that crack almost everything — then walks a representative spine of levels as worked lessons, one per core mechanic, and maps out every area and the secret meta-game (with spoilers clearly walled off). Get the systems and you can solve a level we never mention. Facts are cross-checked against the official Steam page (app 736260), four community walkthroughs and a 100% video guide.

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What is Baba Is You?#

Baba Is You is a $14.99 puzzle game by Finnish developer Hempuli Oy (Arvi “Hempuli” Teikari), released on 13 March 2019. It grew out of a 2017 Nordic Game Jam entry, then swept the 2018 Independent Games Festival with the Excellence in Design and Best Student Game awards. Its premise is deceptively simple and genuinely unlike anything else: in every level, the rules themselves are word-blocks sitting in the world, and you can push them around like crates.

A level might start you with the rule BABA IS YOU (so you control the little white creature called Baba) and FLAG IS WIN (so touching a flag wins). But those words aren’t fixed. Push WALL out of WALL IS STOP and walls stop stopping you. Slide ROCK in front of IS WIN and now the rock is the goal. Re-aim IS YOU at the wall and you become the wall. The game ships with well over 200 hand-built levels that ring every possible change on this idea, and it never once tells you how any of it works. That’s the game: figure out the language, then bend it.

Two mechanical kindnesses make the experimentation painless: undo is unlimited (press Z), and restart is instant (press R). You will use both constantly, and you should. There is no penalty for a wrong move, ever.

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The one idea that explains everything#

Rules read like sentences, almost always in the form NOUN — IS — PROPERTY. BABA IS YOU. WATER IS SINK. FLAG IS WIN. Words count as a rule when they line up in a row or a column with IS in the middle. Push any one of the three words out of line and the rule simply stops being true.

There’s a second form, NOUN — IS — NOUN, which transforms things: ROCK IS BABA turns every rock into a Baba; FLAG IS KEY turns the flag into a key. And here is the rule that makes the whole game possible, the one you must tattoo on your brain:

Text blocks are always pushable — even when nothing says TEXT IS PUSH. The words are the one thing you can always rearrange. That’s your lever on every level.

So the loop of play is: read every rule on the board, ask “which rule is stopping me, and which rule do I wish existed?”, and push words until the second list replaces the first. Two conditions must hold when you’re done: something must be YOU (lose that and you can’t move — undo), and the WIN condition must be satisfied by whatever is YOU touching or becoming whatever is WIN.

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Why this guide doesn’t just list 231 answers#

It’s a fair question, so here’s the honest reasoning. A line-by-line answer key for Baba Is You is a bad idea for three concrete reasons:

• The solutions rot. The game has been patched many times, and levels were re-tuned to close off shortcuts. The community walkthroughs this guide draws on are littered with notes like “this was patched to prevent my solution” and “this changed in an update.” One level, Keep Out, was even moved from Forest of Fall to Deep Forest between versions. A memorised keystroke list will quietly stop matching your copy of the game.
• There usually isn’t one answer. Most levels have several legal solutions — the comment sections of those same walkthroughs are full of “here’s a shorter way.” “The” answer is a fiction, and being handed one robs you of the better one you’d have found.
• It defeats the entire game. Baba Is You is a game about your own realisations. Reading the solution is like being told the punchline; the level still “completes,” but the thing you were buying never happened.

The durable alternative is to get fluent in the language. The next three sections — the glossary, the techniques, and the worked spine — are designed so that when you’re stuck, you can diagnose why and reach for the right tool, on any level, in any version.

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The word glossary: every kind of block#

You don’t need to memorise this — the game feeds you words gradually — but it helps to know the families they fall into. When you meet a new word, do what the game wants: mess with it and watch what it does.

Family	Words	What they do
The essential two	YOU, WIN	What you control, and the goal. Lose all YOU and you’re stuck (undo). Satisfy WIN and the level clears.
Movement & collision	PUSH, STOP, PULL, MOVE, SHIFT, SWAP, FALL, TELE, FLOAT	PUSH/STOP/PULL are physics. MOVE auto-walks and turns at walls. SHIFT is a conveyor that carries whatever sits on it. TELE jumps between paired tiles. FLOAT lifts something onto a separate layer (over or under water and hazards).
Hazards & reactions	SINK, DEFEAT, HOT, MELT, OPEN, SHUT, WEAK	SINK destroys both objects on contact. DEFEAT kills whatever is YOU. HOT destroys MELT. OPEN and SHUT annihilate each other (key & door). WEAK breaks on any touch.
Connectors & conditions	AND, NOT, HAS, MAKE, ON, NEAR, FACING, LONELY, WITHOUT	AND stacks properties. NOT negates (two NOTs cancel). HAS drops an object when something is destroyed. MAKE keeps spawning. The rest are positional triggers, e.g. BABA ON FLAG IS WIN.
Special nouns	TEXT, LEVEL, EMPTY, ALL, GROUP, ME	TEXT means every word-block (so TEXT IS PUSH, TEXT IS YOU, TEXT IS FLOAT are all legal and devastating). LEVEL is the level itself — the key to the meta-game. EMPTY is the blank tiles.
Directions	UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, WORD	As a property, a direction makes an object face or drift that way; combined with SHIFT/MOVE it steers automation. WORD turns an object into its own text block.

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Twelve techniques that crack almost everything#

Almost every level you’ll ever solve is some combination of these moves. When you’re stuck, walk down the list.

1. Read first, touch second. Name every rule on the board before you move. Some levels are solved by breaking a single bad rule and strolling out — if there’s a BABA IS SWAP or FLAG IS DEFEAT hurting you, just walk into one of its words to break it.
2. Break the sentence. The most common first move: push one word out of WALL IS STOP, SKULL IS DEFEAT, WATER IS SINK and the hazard evaporates.
3. Steal the verb. A loose IS plus a loose property can be re-attached to a new noun: build LAVA IS PUSH, KEY IS YOU, ROCK IS MOVE out of spare parts.
4. Repurpose the goal. You don’t have to reach the flag. Make the thing you can reach be the goal: ROCK IS WIN, or make yourself win with BABA IS WIN.
5. Transfer YOU. WALL IS YOU turns an immovable wall into a thing you drive around. You can move whole structures, or split control across two objects at once.
6. Compound with AND. Properties stack: WATER IS HOT AND FLOAT, KEY IS YOU AND OPEN, BABA IS MOVE AND WIN.
7. Cancel with double NOT. BOX IS NOT NOT PUSH is just BOX IS PUSH — useful when the level only gives you NOTs and pushable verbs to work with.
8. Win by elimination. NOT BABA IS WIN or NOT FENCE IS WIN makes everything else the goal, so you win the instant the rule forms.
9. Make a rule eat itself. Push WATER into a standing IS SINK so the water sinks itself and opens a path. The same self-destruction trick runs through HOT/MELT and OPEN/SHUT pairs.
10. Automate, then time with Space. Set an object to MOVE or drop it on a SHIFT belt, press Space to wait turns, and break the rule the instant it’s on the tile you need. Half of Deep Forest is this.
11. Mass-produce with HAS. BOX HAS KEY then smashing every box leaves a pile of keys; DOOR HAS TREE converts a hazard into something useful as it dies.
12. When truly stuck, leave. Skip to another level and come back — bonus levels are often easier than the “main” ones, and a fresh eye solves in minutes what an hour of staring couldn’t.

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The world, area by area — and what each one teaches#

Levels are grouped into themed areas on an overworld map, and each area is essentially a tutorial for one or two new words. You don’t have to finish an area to move on, and you don’t need every level to reach the credits — only enough to open the path forward. Here’s the journey and the lesson each leg drills:

• Overworld / Intro (levels 00–10): the fundamentals — YOU, WIN, STOP, PUSH, and breaking and rebuilding sentences. By level 09 the game is already teasing the meta-game.
• The Lake: SINK and FLOAT — water as both a deadly barrier and a destruction tool.
• Solitary Island: OPEN/SHUT keys and doors, MOVE automation, and clever uses of AND.
• Temple Ruins: tightens the screws on the basics with denser boards and the HAS word.
• Forest of Fall: TELE (teleporting), PULL, and the mighty NOT.
• Deep Forest: the conveyor-belt area — SHIFT, UP/RIGHT directions, SWAP, and elaborate timing puzzles.
• Rocket Trip & Flower Garden: mid-game variety, introducing WEAK, FALL and gravity-flavoured ideas.
• Chasm, Volcanic Cavern, Mountaintop: the difficulty crest — long multi-stage rule chains where you’ll lean on everything above.
• ??? , ABC, Depths, Meta, Center: the secret and endgame areas, reached through the meta-game (below). This is where Baba Is You stops being a puzzle game and becomes something stranger.

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A worked spine: one solved level per core idea#

Rather than dump every level, here are a dozen real levels paraphrased as lessons. Each shows one technique from the list above in action. Read them as worked examples of how to think, not as a script to copy — and remember your version may differ slightly. Mild solution spoilers for these specific early levels follow.

Breaking and building (Overworld)

• “Where Do I Go?” — Walls block you and the flag isn’t a win yet. Break WALL IS STOP (push one word aside) so you can pass, then assemble FLAG IS WIN from the loose words. Lesson: break the bad rule, build the rule you need.
• “Out of Reach” — The flag is across water you can’t cross. Push a rock into the water to make a stepping-stone gap, then change ROCK IS PUSH into ROCK IS WIN and touch it. Lesson: if you can’t reach the goal, move the goal to something you can reach.
• “Volcano” — Lava bars the way. Free up a stray IS and PUSH and reassemble them as LAVA IS PUSH; now you shove the lava aside. Lesson: steal the verb to repurpose a hazard.
• “Off Limits” — You can’t reach the flag, but you can reach the wall. Break WALL IS STOP and build WALL IS YOU, then drive the whole wall up onto the flag. Lesson: transfer YOU to whatever can actually get there.

Water, AND, and self-destruction (Lake & Island)

• “Warm River” — Build WATER IS HOT AND FLOAT; the water lifts onto another layer and you walk safely underneath it (and under the skulls). Lesson: stack properties with AND to get a single object doing two jobs.
• “Evaporating River” — Stand IS SINK beside the river and push WATER into it: the water becomes SINK and instantly sinks itself, clearing a path. Then make a cog SINK to dissolve a skull in the same way. Lesson: a rule can consume the very thing it’s applied to.
• “Tiny Pond” — Turn the flag into a key (FLAG IS KEY) so you have two keys, then build KEY IS YOU AND OPEN so the keys you control also open water. Lesson: duplicate an object and give it two properties at once.

Teleporting and NOT (Forest of Fall)

• “Hop” — Your first TELE level. Paired hearts teleport whatever enters them. Route PUSH through a heart, then flip the heart between LOVE IS PUSH and LOVE IS TELE to teleport a patch of water out of existence. Lesson: TELE moves things across the board through paired tiles — including problems you want gone.
• “Not There” & “Even Less There” — Make FENCE IS NOT STOP to phase through the fence. The harder variant gives you fewer words, so you instead build NOT FENCE IS WIN — everything that isn’t the fence becomes a win and you clear instantly. Lesson: NOT both unblocks and, pointed at WIN, wins by elimination.
• “Dead End” — The only verb you can form reads BOX IS NOT NOT PUSH; the two NOTs cancel into plain PUSH, so you can shove the boxes into the water and sink them. Lesson: double negatives cancel — sometimes that’s the only legal path to a property.

Observation and mass-production (Deep Forest)

• “Nearly” / “Not Quite” — These look fearsome but are solved by a single move: walk into a word of BABA IS SWAP (or FLAG IS SWAP) to break the rule that’s hurting you, then touch the flag. Lesson: read the board — the answer is sometimes the smallest possible action.
• “Factory” — Make BOX IS YOU, then BOX HAS KEY, and smash all your boxes — each one drops a key, leaving a pile big enough to open every door with one to spare for the flag. Lesson: HAS turns destruction into a resource; mass-produce what a level rations.

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The meta-game and secret worlds#

Spoiler warning: the rest of this section reveals that Baba Is You has a hidden layer beyond the visible levels. It says how to look, not what you’ll find. Skip ahead to Controls if you’d rather discover it cold.

Here is the realisation the back half of the game is built around: on the overworld map, the level icons are objects too. The map is itself a Baba Is You board, with its own rules you can rewrite. The word LEVEL refers to the levels-as-objects, so rules like LEVEL IS YOU, LEVEL IS BABA and LEVEL IS WIN become possible — and a handful of early levels (notably the Overworld’s “Fragile Existence” and “Hostile Environment”) quietly hand you the pieces to start doing it.

Pull those threads and the map opens up. Turning specific levels into Baba or into flags unlocks the cryptic ??? world; further secret areas — ABC, the Depths (whose levels are hidden until you puzzle out how to even reach them), Meta, and the Center — form the true endgame. The final stretch asks you to apply everything: the meta-rules of the map, the self-referential LEVEL and TEXT tricks, and the patience to treat the game’s own structure as the puzzle. We’ll leave the destination unspoiled; getting there is the reward.

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Controls & quality-of-life#

• Move: arrow keys / WASD / d-pad. Wait a turn: Space — essential for timing MOVE and SHIFT objects.
• Undo: Z (unlimited). Restart level: R. Use them freely; there is no cost and no “move limit.”
• If a level won’t crack, leave and try another — the map lets you progress around a wall, and a different puzzle often teaches the exact word the stuck one needed.
• When you learn a new word, stop and play with it for a minute before trying to win. Understanding what SHIFT or HAS actually does is worth more than any single solution.

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Watch a full run#

For the levels where you’d rather see a solution than read one — especially the belt-timing puzzles and the secret worlds — this 1080p60 playthrough covers every map, including the hidden areas and the world-map meta-game. Treat it as a hint of last resort: peek at the setup, then look away and finish it yourself.

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Sources & credits#

Game facts are from the official Baba Is You Steam page (app 736260, Hempuli Oy). Mechanics, level structure and the worked examples were cross-checked against the community walkthroughs by AppUnwrapper (the hub, Solitary Island, Forest of Fall and Deep Forest), and the Steam guides by SazzyP (Step By Step Solutions) and Wakadakforreal. The embedded video is the 100% playthrough by frozen.LiQuid & FaTalzZ. All solution text here is our own paraphrase written to teach the underlying ideas; for the original authors’ full level-by-level write-ups, follow the links above.