Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning

Overview

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning is a freeware indie comedic first-person survival horror game developed and released by Micah McGonigal for the PC (via itch.io) on March 27, 2018. It can be downloaded here.

Originally developed for the Meta Game Jam (which feature games with metafictional elements that deconstruct their genre), Baldi's Basics is a parody of cheaply-made PC edutainment games of the 1990's (most notably Sonic's Schoolhouse). It also satirizes the indie survival horror genre popularized by Slender: The Eight Pages, with players searching the area for objectives while being chased by a being that causes both a small jumpscare and a game over once it catches up.

The game has players wandering around the schoolhouse, being tasked by the titular teacher Baldi with collecting seven notebooks scattered around and answering correctly three math problems within each notebook. As the game starts innocently enough, a "glitch" in the game quickly causes some questions to become unanswerable, forcing the player to answer incorrectly and angering Baldi. The game then proceeds with its survival-horror genre twist and players must collect all notebooks and escape while avoiding Baldi (who slaps his ruler in a loud manner as he hunts down the player, getting faster with each incorrect answer increasing his speed), navigating past the other schoolhouse denizens (such as the Principal of the Thing, who sends the player to detention for breaking school rules), and collecting useful items.

Made in the Unity Engine, the game gained online popularity in similar fashion to other indie horror games (such as Five Nights at Freddy's) due to its YouTuber appeal. A commercial sequel to the game, known as Baldi's Basics Plus, is in development by McGonigal's studio, Basically Games.

The game was later re-released by Basically Games in multiple storefronts on October 21, 2022 as Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered. Along with an updated version of the original game ("Classic Style"), it features a demo of Baldi's Basics Plus ("Demo Style"), a new mode ("Party Style", or Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash), and several new hidden modes and content. All game modes make use of the same schoolhouse area, but with different item placements and gameplay elements (such as Party Style wrapping all the items as gifts and shuffling them around).