The game this article is based on is “Baba Is You” [1]. It’s a logic puzzle game where you try to get “you” to “flag” — or more precisely, “win” (which, by default most of the time, “flag is win”) — but you manipulate a number of objects and join them with other words to change the “rules” of the game.

I highly recommend it to the HN crowd.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/

I've written about the cognitive aspect the author talks about before:

https://blog.jtoy.net/examining-concepts-through-different-f...

https://blog.jtoy.net/on-the-wondrous-human-simulation-engin...

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.12068

The human brain has at least over 12 different coordinate systems. I like to reference this image: https://cln.sh/gpqhwrw2Hg92MQz62TY6

Humans have the ability to inspect anything from any point of view that we want, like a real time video game simulation system in our minds. I suspect that artificial neural networks are missing this core ability to encode and translate its point of view when processing data. Just look at basic LLMs failing at the reversal curse: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12288 No amount of more GPUs and more training data will fix it.

The entorhinal cortex in humans has a special kind of neuron called grid cells that works with hippocampus cells to do generalized coordinate translations. The discovery of grid cells won a nobel peace prize ( https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2014/advanced-inf... ). It is a prime suspect to incorporate for a coordinate transformation layer in my opinion.

I want to build an ANN that incorporates this "coordinate transformation system", but I'm not sure how to translate it into code, this is my dream project.

The game is truley mind blowing. The rules are simple and clear, there are no special hidden tricks, yet almost every puzzle goes from "it's impossible" to "oh didn't think of that". Truley shatters you assumptions over and over.

While on the topic of games that change your thinking or give you skills, any recommendations?

A few I benefited from:

Chess: for general lessons of resourcefulness, creativity, calculation, pausing before acting, and practicing being comfortable with irresolution (e.g. when two or more pieces could be traded but you have to resist the urge to simplify if doing so worsens your position). Chess also opened my eyes to how much distractions and inadequate sleep affect cognition (my elo can drop 100 points when badly lacking sleep, and another 100 if playing in a public place with distractions).

Vim Adventures: not exciting enough to recommend for gaming alone, but it made it bearable to repeat vim key strokes for 3-4 hours per day for a few days straight until I had the muscle memory to use it for most coding tasks without too much clumsiness.

DuoLingo: less of a 'game'; more of an educational tool, but still worth the mention as it made learning foreign language much easier than doing so via book/audio.

Few moments (or hours, or days, depending when you are reading this post) ago a custom level set, titled "The Legend of Zelbaba: Linkeke between words" was presented @party 2024 - https://scenesat.com/video/atparty . Actual presentation starts at around 17-ish minute of live stream. Level pack is here (base game required): https://gamebanana.com/mods/150971

Shameless plug for a side project i have been working on for a few years, but if you like Baba is You you may enjoy Pathology or Sokopath. They can be played on my site Thinky.gg (https://thinky.gg)

Theres a pretty active community on Thinky publishing block pushing levels every day. Levels range from Kindergarten to Super Grandmaster in difficulty. Also features a level editor where you can publish custom levels to the world.

>> Among other things, it dissolves barriers between data and algorithm, between a cognitive system and its contents, and gets you to think differently.

Ah, I remember my epiphany, 13 ish years ago when Prolog first clicked for me. I put it into a little rhyming couplet:

  There is no separation
  'tween data and operation

Funny how you have to go all the way to the highest level just to find the same simple truths that define the lowest level; of computation.

Games are cool too.

Fun fact, the developer behind this game also made another technical marvel of a game called Noita. A game best described by the fact most players don't realise they've only played the tutorial.

Baba is you is similarly a good introduction to the mindset needed to write exploits.

If you replace "WALL" "IS" "STOP" with icons/images, it's not that interesting anymore imho.

At the very least, Captain Blood would come to mind.

https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_galeries....

You have sequences of symbols, with attached mechanics. Arrange the blocks in different order, to get different outcomes.

Maybe I'm just grumpy today, I don't see how the game is "profound".

edit: I guess what I have in mind is if anything, the fact we can create meaning out of any collection of symbols, and decide waht it means, shows that language is really empty and intelligence is completely outside of language. Language is just a tool.

I just installed Baba is You. It reminds me of Sokoban. I and my friend spent several hours playing Sokoban in college. It was frustratingly difficult.

Related albeit tiny:

Baba Is You - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25560525 - Dec 2020 (1 comment)

More:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> There’s also plenty of opportunity to involve AI in this kind of virtual world.

interesting type of game, even though i would not personally play it. however, the author shared a resource to simulate the game for reinforcement learning (https://github.com/utilForever/baba-is-auto).

Just learn a programming language that allows for metaprogramming.