Baba is You is Undecidable

Jonathan Geller

doi:10.1109/cog57401.2023.10333219

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arXiv · 2205.00127

Baba is You is Undecidable

Jonathan Geller

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Abstract

We establish the undecidability of 2019 puzzle game Baba is You through a reduction from the Post correspondence problem. In particular, we consider a restricted form of the Post correspondence problem introduced by Neary (arXiv:1312.6700) that is limited to five pairs of words. Baba is You is an award winning tile-based game in which the player can reprogram the game's mechanisms by pushing blocks that spell out the rules. We achieve undecidability through a generalization of the size of the playfield in the horizontal direction, adding a "hallway" to one side of the level. The undecidability of Baba is You has been claimed several times online using different source problems, including the simulation of Turing machines and Conway's Game of Life, however, this contribution appears to be the first formal proof of the result.

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Jonathan Geller. 2022-04-30. Baba is You is Undecidable. https://doi.org/10.1109/cog57401.2023.10333219

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