The mechanics and banal brilliance of Baba Files Taxes

gamedeveloper.com:

This interview has been edited for clarity 

Anybody who's ever felt the oppressive, crushing weight of the Tax Form will understand the subtle brilliance of Baba Files Taxes, a free Itch release for Windows PC that asks players to help Baba of Baba is You fame complete their tax return before the approaching deadline.

Baba is You creator Arvi Teikari unwittingly launched the tongue-in-cheek title back in January, right in the middle of tax season. While the timing might seem very deliberate, during a recent chat with Teikari we learned it was a happy accident born out of a desire to simply release This Thing they'd been working on stop-start over the course of months.

Although Teikari estimates that Baba Files Taxes only took about five days to complete, they actually began working on the initial concept last summer. In a bid to find some kind of creative catharsis by finally crossing some game ideas off their burgeoning to-do list, the Finland-based developer decided to create 12 short projects over the course of 12 months, but was unfortunately waylaid because life, as it always does, got in the way.

One idea, however, refused to disappear. After watching a streamer play a video game where they had to copy paintings, hopefully better than some IRL attempts, Teikari started thinking about how they might implement a simple algorithm that could evaluate the quality of a drawing or piece of artwork. "I wondered what kind of nonsense I could use to fake a game seemingly understanding what looks nice, or what is art," they explain.

At that point, they also recalled a how Nintendo DS game (the name of which is now long-forgotten) had used a similar mechanic to evaluate the signatures of players, telling them if it wasn't