Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning (also known as Baldi's Basics, Baldi's Basics Classic, BBIEaL, or simply Baldi) is a free-to-play video game developed by American independent video game developer Micah McGonigal (known as mystman12 on Twitter). It was released on March 31, 2018.

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning

"Congratulations! You found all seven notebooks! Now all you need to do is...GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!" "Hahahahaaaa!""
— Baldi

Genre(s):	Survival-Horror Edutainment
Platform(s):	Microsoft Windows macOS Linux
Release Date:	Microsoft Windows, macOS March 31, 2018 Linux July 5, 2018
Developer(s):	mystman12
Publisher(s):	Basically Games
Series:	Baldi's Basics
Successor:	Baldi's Basics Plus

The game was developed in two weeks as an entry in the annual Meta-Game Jam that received 2nd place in the Meta-Game Jam's Top 5 Games. The main inspiration of Baldi's Basics in Education & Learning is bad '90s edutainment games such as Sonic's Schoolhouse, as well as pulling the "this game is not what it seems" gimmick.

Plot

This is the plot according to the game's description:

"Oh noes! School is out, but your friend has a problem! He left all his noteboos in school, but dosen't have time to get them, because if he does he'll be late for eating pracitce.

To help him out, you have to go back in the school and find all 7 of his notebooks for him. It won't be easy though! Baldi loves challenging his students with fun trivia problems whenever he can! Each time you find a notebook, you'll have to answer some questions.

Answer all three correctly, and you will earn a prize! Find all 7 notebooks, and then exit the school to win!"

Intentional Bad Qualities

NOTE: As mentioned before, this game was created as a joke, so please don't take it too seriously.

The music is just MIDI files, despite being released in 2018.
The title screen is poorly made as seen in the infobox.
Horrible graphics and the character designs are very ugly. Baldi himself looks like he came from the 1980s despite being in a 1990s-inspired game.
The 3rd question of every notebook starting with Notebook #2 is always the same thing as it is always glitched up. No matter what answer you type in, it will always be classified as wrong.
There are some annoying characters during the gameplay:
- Playtime is extremely annoying. Every time you run into her, you have to play jump rope, and if you miss one jump, you have to do it over again. Luckily, you can use the Safety Scissors to cut her jump rope.
- It's A Bully is also annoying. He completely blocks the path, which prevents you from running from Baldi unless you have any item or if the Principal is nearby.
- Sometimes, some characters like Gotta Sweep speak extremely loudly. You can still hear their voices whenever they yell even if your volume is low.
- The Principal of the Thing is very annoying as even when he clearly sees you're about to get caught by Baldi, he still locks you in the Principal's Office, and after the 30-second detention, you’re likely going to get caught anyway.
  - However, the Principal can be useful for escaping Baldi when being chased and you are far from the office.
  - By using the Principal's Keys, you can use them to get out of detention early as long as he is not near the office.
Using Baldi's Least Favorite Tape on the Tape Player and using a Quarter on the Noise Phone distracts Baldi, but it is kind of worthless since you can use BSODA right away, which pushes characters away.
Quarters pop out of nowhere whenever you are playing the game, but they are useful at times.
The unbearable voice acting. Some voices are filled to the brim with loudness and most of them have no emotion or charm to them.
The game has really bad but mostly awful-looking animation, especially by modern standards.
The game feels more like a Friv game than an actual video game.
The game is somewhat of a rip-off of Slender. It's Slender, but in a school setting, which has been done already.
The audio can become distorted and extremely loud, especially after finding all 7 notebooks.
If you ignore all the ear rape, there is nothing scary about the game.
The game isn't even a horror game as much as the only horror thing is the jumpscare and that's it. In other words, it looks like a generic regular game.
The skybox is horrible. It's not even a sky, it’s just walls and a roof textured as a sky.

Public Demo

The audio quality is even worse than the original game.
Gotta Sweep doesn’t have a Janitor's Closet, instead residing in a faculty room.
Boring gameplay.
The game doesn’t close instantly when you hit the exit button.
Some textures are placeholders. This is a demo though, but there are a little too many.
Playtime is too easy to run away from, as in the original game, she can sometimes go in the same direction, trying to chase you. Now she always turns around when you get out of her sight, removing the challenge from the game.
An Apple for Baldi removes even more challenges from the game. Additionally, Baldi still proceeds to go after the player for no reason after eating said apple.
There is no reason for Baldi to chase the player in this demo as there is no You Can Think! Pad in this version.
The conveyor belt slows the player down too much.
Several items from the original game were removed.
Baldi’s broken ruler event makes no sense, as Baldi is just slapping nothing, making it difficult for the player to hear where he is.
The Elevator, which is yet another placeholder, is misspelled as “ELEVATE“, though this typo could be done on purpose.
The test procedure random event has a broken countdown system, starting from 0, and then going from 9 to 1.
The graphics aren’t as good as Baldi’s Basics Classic.
The map feels extremely repetitive after a while.
Some characters were removed, such as Filename2.
The Kickstarter Demo has far more content than this game which is supposed to be a full game demo, the Public Demo doesn’t even have a random level generator and several features from the original game are missing.

Good Qualities

This game is meant to be a throwback to 90s PC edutainment games, like Sonic's Schoolhouse.
- It also seems to be a parody of modern horror games. To be specific, it's likely parodying Slender: The Eight Pages and Granny.
1st Prize, a hug-loving robot, can serve as both an ally and an enemy to the player. However, he turns very slowly.
The game has an Endless Mode, a nice alternative if you get bored playing the Story Mode.
mystman12 recently made a Kickstarter for the game, which he used to develop it into a full game with features including randomly generated levels, new characters, field trips that reward items and permanent buffs, and more.
The concept of mixing an education and a horror game is an interesting idea.
Some special structures and random events in the Public Demo are funny.
The developer, mystman12, has given the game some nice updates. (i.e. New items, changes in AI Behavior, a mobile port, smoother physics, etc.)
The theme song for this game is great and pretty catchy.

Reception

The main inspiration of Baldi's Basics in Education & Learning is '90s edutainment games such as Sonic's Schoolhouse, as well as pulling the "game is not what it seems" gimmick. The game, despite being placed in 2nd, has been recently getting high critical praise from its fans, even making mods for the game and fangames.

Most people who didn't get that the game was bad on purpose gave overwhelmingly negative reviews and negative reactions, while people who took the game as the horror parody it was supposed to be, for the most part, reacted positively, which led to the game even getting its fandom and cult-following.

Trivia

One of the official images found in McGonigal's previous tweets back during the game's development shows that there were going to be more subjects than just math, including science, spelling, history, geography, and geology, the creator claims that he won't be adding any of those back in though.
The game is mostly made of 2D objects. Desks, lockers, chairs, tables, Zesty Machine, and the BSODA Machine are the only 3D models.
Baldi's Basics is based on the late 90's edutainment game genre.
- The games that Baldi's Basics was inspired by are Sonic's Schoolhouse, I.M. Meen, Slender, and 3D Dinosaur Adventure: Save The Dinosaurs.
The game became part of a game chain that contains other popular games. Baldi's Basics is commonly crossed over with games of that chain.
- As of February 1st, the game has an official mobile port, which can be downloaded on the game's itch.io page.
Two of the game's characters, It's a Bully and Baldi himself were characters created by McGonigal during his childhood, years before the game was conceived.
McGonigal created the game entirely by himself in only 2 weeks.
There is a chance that the Principal of the Thing could be a poorly edited photograph of mystman12 himself. It is not confirmed, but it is assumed to be him.
McGonigal provides almost all of the voices in the game, except for 1st Prize, who is voiced by a text-to-speech program.
In the game's files, you can find many unused sounds. For example, two sound clips for The Principal Of The Thing were intended for a character that would immobilize the player while stabbing them and looking into others' lockers, Playtime would give you instructions on how to do the jump rope (which was unused due to it increasing the difficulty and not being necessary) and the jumps you are required for Playtime to let you go was going to be 10 instead of 5 (likely for the same reason the instructions went unused). Luckily, you can use a mod (Baldi's BRUTAL Basics) that makes the game harder and puts the 10 jumps requirement back in.
There are good mods for this game, like Baldi's Basics: The Old Laboratory, Cutman's Clues in Boo Boo Stuff, The School, Retro's Basics in Fun Activities (the first decompile mod), and the infamous Garfelf's Guide series.
According to mystman12, the Principal of the Thing is wearing a yellow bow tie, but it is extremely hard to see because he uses very few colors to depict the Principal's image, as the Principal's skin color is very similar to the color of his bow tie. It is located on his neck and can more clearly be seen in his merchandise items.

Videos

Comments

Loading comments...