Trivia / Baba is You

• Ascended Fanon: One of the most popular fan concepts of the game is "metatext" - text that refers to specific other words, instead of the text as a whole. This would allow you to, among other things, turn objects into specific words (rather than just the word that refers to them, by turning them into Text). Come version 449, a new batch of secret levels was added to the ??? world in the main campaign, notably introducing a new word, Write, which allows objects to be transformed into any specific word.
• Dummied Out:
  • The Level Editor was left inaccessible on initial release due to being only partly finished, but a little hacking could bring it back. Within it are a handful of fully-coded text bits that never made it into the original game—"Eat" causes one kind of object to destroy another, "Safe" makes things impossible to destroy, etc. The November 2021 update finally makes these available and comes with many new puzzles showcasing the new rules.
  • There were many levels that were cut for one reason or another. Most of them made an appearance in Museum levelpack with commentary of why they were left out.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Baba was originally a robot in the demo. A drawing that confused Baba's antennae for goat horns later led to the creation of the full game's animal-like Baba.
  • Several keywords were partially or fully coded, but don't appear in the base game: Back would make objects move backwards in time, Fear would make objects move away from other objects, Safe would provide invulnerability, Eat would work about how it sounds, Stick would make objects clump together, and Hold would cause an object to prevent other objects from moving, should they enter the tile it's on. After the official release of the Level Editor, Back, Fear, Safe and Eat would be readily available, while Hold would be exclusive to the Museum level pack, leaving Stick as the only word that didn't make it in the final game in any capacity.
  • The Best keyword showed up more often in the game jam version, rather than just being a background element in one stage as in the final. It adds sparkles to an object's graphic but otherwise does nothing.
  • Slip is the only word in the original game jam version that does not survive the transition to the final game in any form. Its function can at least be easily replicated with the other words.

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