Back in the day, if you were stuck in a game, you were just stuck there. However, thanks to YouTube, we now have speedruns and tutorials. Among these, Baldi’s Basics speedrun fandom is something to marvel at.
With millions of views and thousands of comments, the speedrun videos provide entertainment for the game’s enthusiasts. So what exactly is Baldi’s Basics, and what makes this one speedrun so cool? Let’s dive in.
What Is Baldi’s Basics?
Baldi’s Basics in Education and Learning is a survival horror game created by Micah McGonigal. The game mimics the edutainment and educational games made in the 1990s, with similar themes and graphics. Think Sonic’s Schoolhouse and 3D Dinosaur Adventure. That’s where Baldi’s Basics takes inspiration from.
The Storyline
The story begins with the protagonist’s friend misplacing seven of his notebooks at the local school. Since he’s busy, he cannot return to get them, so he sends the protagonist instead.
The protagonist goes to the local school and encounters Baldi, a professor. Baldi presents arithmetic questions — as simple as 2 + 2 — to the protagonist every time he finds a notebook. Every notebook has three simple arithmetic questions in the form of riddles.
Sounds simple enough? Not really. Baldi tends to get angry pretty quickly. Baldi starts chasing them around the school if the protagonist gets an answer wrong. The protagonist has to run around the school looking for the other notebooks while avoiding different challenges and other students.
However, this sounds like a regular video game with a simple plot, doesn’t it? Here’s the catch. After the second notebook, the third question in every other notebook is unsolvable. So, getting it wrong is inevitable. That’s where Baldi comes in, following the player faster with every wrong answer.
Even after the protagonist collects all the notebooks, there’s another challenge – finding the right exit. There are three exits in the game, but only one is real. The protagonist has to activate all exits before they can use the actual exit.
©History-Computer.com
What Are Speedruns?
A speedrun is the act of completing a video game as fast as possible. In a speedrun, the player tries to finish the game in the shortest timespan using different means, such as exploiting the game’s shortcuts and glitches. No cheating, though.
Speedrunning is now a popular activity among gamers online. Many gamers also partake in speedrunning events in which these individuals compete to see who can finish the game in the shortest period.
Since Baldi’s Basics quickly became famous due to its creepy and quirky style, it attracted a huge gaming community. Since then, the game has seen many memes, mods, and fan-made versions of Baldi’s Basics.
So, it’s only natural for Baldi’s Basics to have speedruns. We found one on YouTube and are stoked to discuss it.
What Is Baldi’s Basics Speedrun?
Baldi’s Basics speedruns are videos of people completing the game in the shortest time. The Baldi’s Basics Any% Speedrun in 4:38.2 is one of the most phenomenal of these videos on YouTube. Let’s talk about it.
The video was posted by IlluminatiHD, a channel that had 626k subscribers at the time of writing. Although the original poster introduces himself as a Minecraft gamer and posts videos playing it, he seems to have made an exception for Baldi’s Basics.
IlluminatiHD’s speedrun is four minutes and 38 seconds long. That’s quite impressive, considering most videos you’ll find on YouTube for the game take around nine minutes to finish. We’ll cover the minute-by-minute gameplay of this speedrun below.
Baldi’s Basics Speedrun: 1st Minute
As the player enters the school, he finds the first notebook in about three seconds. By the 7.5-second mark, he answers the first three questions Baldi throws at him, getting a ‘Wow! You Exist!’ reaction from the professor.
He finds the second notebook at around the 17.5-second mark. Again, he is faced with three questions, two of which he answers correctly. Why not the third? As mentioned, the third question becomes unsolvable from the second notebook onward.
What’s unsolvable, you may ask. It’s just a jumble of letters and words on the screen that disappear as soon as they appear. So, there’s no way to answer that question.
Once the player gets the answer wrong in this Baldi’s Basics speedrun, Baldi threatens him with ”I hear every door you open.” Around the midpoint of the first minute, the player collects a quarter.
What Is a Quarter in Baldi’s Basics?
In Baldi’s Basics, the first item a player can collect after recovering the first notebook is the quarter. It can be used to:
- Use the pay phone to distract Baldi
- Purchase Energy Flavored Zesty Bars or BSODAs (an in-game soda drink) from the vending machine
- Access the coin doors (requiring coins to be inserted in the coin slot to open)
The player doesn’t find any other notebook till the end of the first minute. We see him roaming around the school in the locker area. At some point, he collects a BSODA.
Baldi’s Basics Speedrun: 2nd Minute
At the 1 minute 15 second mark, the player finds the third notebook in a classroom, just like the previous two. He fails to answer the third question again, making the game creepier.
At around 1:40 seconds, the player finds the fourth notebook. Just when we reach the 2-minute mark, the fifth notebook is also found in a classroom.
Baldi’s Basics Speedrun: 3rd Minute
At 2:23, Baldi finally makes an appearance in the game. He seems to be following the player and is holding a ruler in his hand.
The player runs to a nearby lunch area and collects an Energy Flavored Zesty Bar there. If you plan to play the game, take advantage of these bars since they boost your stamina. Although the game doesn’t show the Staminometer needle after you use the zesty bar, you’ll see the needle has moved to the left slightly.
At 2:53, the player finds the sixth notebook. Instead of the ”I hear every door you close” threat Baldi has been giving earlier for every wrong answer, he now says, ”I get angrier for every problem you get wrong.”
Baldi’s Basics Speedrun: 4th Minute
The player finally recovers the last notebook at the 3:21 mark. After he recovers the notebook, a voice tells him that he has found all seven notebooks.
At this point, the lighting inside the school changes to an eerie red, like a warning sign that Baldi is getting more agitated. Plus, warning sounds in the background make the gameplay eerie and strange. Now, the player needs to find his way out.
Baldi’s Basics Speedrun: Final 38 Seconds
As the clock hits the 4:00 mark, creepy sounds start echoing around the school hallways. They get faster as the player moves through the hallways to find the exits.
At 4:30, he returns to the lunch area, where he had collected the Energy Flavored Zesty bar from. The lunch area has an exit sign, and the player exits through it at 4:38. As soon as he exits, the game shows the Congratulations screen, showing him that he has won.
What Can You Learn From Baldi’s Basics Speedruns? (Especially This One)
Speedruns are a great way to learn about a game. If you’re a newbie, you can get familiar with the game plan and the graphics before you start playing the game yourself. You can also learn about the different collectibles in the game and how to use them.
The Baldi’s Basics Speedrun has the same benefits. Since the game became popular online, it has attracted thousands of players. However, the old-school graphics can be hard to get used to. The speedruns can help you get the hang of things.
What’s so special about the Baldi’s Basics speedrun we discussed above? Here are some things.
Strategic Gameplay
Unlike more complex games like Minecraft and Free Fire, which require you to be tactical and build things inside the game, Baldi’s Basics takes after its name. It’s basic.
What works in the game is strategy. Here are a few things we picked up from IlluminatiHD’s gameplay:
- Remembering the Game Plan: The school isn’t too big, but it’s so mono-colored that it’s hard to remember the location of each item. IlluminatiHD travels around the school in a planned manner, picking up objects and remembering where he took them from. That’s exactly how he remembered that the lunch area he picked the bar from had an exit sign. In all honesty, we missed it while watching.
- Using the Items: After he collected six notebooks, the Staminometer showed IlluminatiHD that he needed to rest. That’s when he used his energy bar to boost stamina. What we learned is that you should use the energy bar once you have most notebooks in your possession since Baldi is the fastest at that time, and you need all the energy you can get.
One way to remember the in-game places is to look at specific landmarks. For example, there were a few Christmas trees in one hallway. Another hallway had lockers. Remembering these landmarks will help you save time when passing through the same hallways because you won’t go through the same classrooms that you’ve already checked.
Correct Answers
Yes, you cannot get the third answer right. Yet you can always get the first two right for each notebook. The more answers you get wrong, the faster Baldi gets. So, follow in IlluminatiHD’s footsteps and answer all other questions correctly.
Wrapping Up
The Baldi’s Basics speedrun we discussed above definitely has the potential to teach you the tips and tricks of winning the game. It’s not a world record, though, since the original poster mentioned that someone had finished the game in 4 minutes and 22 seconds. Despite that, the speedrun was amazing and had us hooked throughout. If you want to enjoy someone beating Baldi at his own games, check out the video here.
The image featured at the top of this post is ©Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com.
