Thafnine starts by discussing some things in the tech industry in 2011, highlighting the industry's creation of the survival horror genre with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, followed by heavily-overlapping indie horror genre with Slender: The Eight Pages, both of which boomed online with YouTubers like PewDiePie playing through the pair. Slender also spawned the fangame industry, with its simple concept being changed in a wide variety of ways by a variety of people.
Later, in 2018, indie horror has boomed, with free games being posted daily on sites such as itch.io, and especially so with the development of game jams: periods where game developers come together in a competition, often for money. The Meta Game Jam 2018, a competition to develop a game about games, had 111 entries, with Farfalle OS winning, which was a coding simulator with pasta puns and fourth-wall breaking. Another contestant, Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning by mystman12, was based on Sonic's Schoolhouse and is about a student whose friend left his seven "noteboos" in the school after-hours. Taking from Sonic's Schoolhouse's unique control scheme and artstyle and Slender's slow chases from math teacher Baldi, the player has to solve simple math questions (three per notebook) until an impossible question shows up at the end of the second notebook, angering Baldi into chasing you. Every third question in a notebook thereafter will increase Baldi's ruler smacking and speed, making the game more and more difficult. Utilizing the edutainment genre's uncanny music and art, Baldi's Basics used silence after getting the impossible question wrong (except for Baldi's smacking), creating suspense and fear.
As Baldi's Basics has gotten updates since the Meta Game Jam 2018, new characters has been added. Playtime, who forces you to jump rope 5 times before you can start moving again, chases after you once she sees you. Gotta Sweep yells his name before quickly moving around the school, pushing the player and other characters on his path. It's a Bully blocks hallways and takes items if the player gets close enough before disappearing, though he can also be removed more recently by Principal of the Thing, who will chase you and send you to detention if you break one of the school rules, locking you in the office from 15 to 99 seconds. These NPCs allow Baldi to catch you more easily, as he can "hear every door you open," meaning he can figure out where you are even without seeing you. When you find all seven notebooks, you need to run to the four exits of the school, and the last NPC, Arts & Crafters, starts to act, teleporting you and Baldi to the starting hallway if you look at him too long. If you make it to the fourth exit, you win.
The art and difficulty, with mystman12 himself taking hours to beat it, brought Baldi's Basics to the eye of YouTubers, reviving the indie horror that had been overwhelmed with Five Nights at Freddy's content. Fangames were then made of Baldi's Basics, with one of the most well-known being Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski, by EternityDev, which had a wildly different, but still-pixelated style, more difficult math questions (being "Advanced Education," after all), and NPCs now being active during the math segments and most being capable of killing the player. Mr. Mix, for instance, is based on a creepypasta of the same name and will put you into his soup if you don't go to the cafeteria and spell to help him cook. However, the game didn't go as well due to its difficulty, but has had a variety of differentiating updates since. Made on Unreal Engine like Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski, Baldi's Unreal Basics is a more realistic (except for the character sprites), new NPCs, and more, which Thafnine notes as, again like Advanced Education, missing the point of the original Baldi's Basics.
Coming up on its one-year anniversary, the Birthday Bash Edition came out with new items that affect NPCs, alongside a new NPC: First Prize, who works similar to Gotta Sweep but chases the player. After finding the notebooks and exits, Baldi tells you to blow out the candle on the top of the giant cake in the cafeteria, opening access to an odd second floor, with glitched balloon Baldis. Solving a counting puzzle with the balloons, the glitched Baldis all catch you with loud noises, the first time Baldi's had leaned into the horror content. mystman12, seeing the large YouTube fandom, launched a Kickstarter campaign to expand the game into something bigger, with more expansive content, eventually becoming Baldi's Basics Plus. With multiple game modes, the now-Super Schoolhouse includes field trips and a different plot, now playing Hide-and-Seek with Baldi and collecting notebooks on your way, some of which are math machines instead, a feature from Sonic's Schoolhouse. When doing math successfully, Baldi stops to congratulate you; however, there are many new difficult additions, such as a randomized set of floors. New NPCs include Beans, who shoots gum at you to slow you down, Cloudy Copter, who blows down a hallway to speed up or slow down the player, and Mrs. Pomp, who invites you to a classroom to find with the new map within the time limit or she'll freak out, alerting Baldi. Random events also occur, from whirlpools and floods to mystery rooms, which do a variety of things and can help or hinder you. Power tubes in the elevator you start in before each floor show the amount of lives you have, and the YTP currency, which Thafnine says stand for YouTube Poops but actually are You Thought Points, can be used to buy items from a shop between floors.
Baldi's Basics Plus is still in early access and with only one ending, mystman12 went back and recreeated the original Baldi's Basics, creating a Remastered Edition, providing a currently fuller but simpler game compared to Plus, showing a launcher screen like games from the era it replicates and three game modes based on each of the three other versions, each of which can be played in story or endless mode. Completing each game mode unlocks a Fun Setting, which also affect the variety of lore-filled endings it has. Classic Style, replicating the original Baldi's Basics, but making the You Can Think Pad more accurate to the art style and featuring lip syncing. First Prize pushing you into a wall creates a thud that alerts Baldi, which has an associated Baldicator that tells you when he notices a sound. NPCs are generally easier, but there is a new alternate ending for getting every solvable math question wrong, which alerts Baldi even more due to him hearing "math that bad" and chasing you much faster until he loses you, then slowing down. Completing this ending basically requires using the variety of items available and good luck, but rewards you with a glitched Baldi and a new NPC standing behind the table in Baldi's office, urging you to delete the game. Party Style is based on the Birthday Bash Edition, with items now as presents and randomly placed. Finding all the exits here brings you again to the second floor and an odd copy of Baldi's office with an alarm blaring and balloon Baldis. Completing the puzzle again glitches the second floor, revealing a crying Baldi as glitched balloon Baldis fly around. The alternate ending requires the Dangerous Teleporter to teleport back down to the first floor, which is difficult due to the randomized items, as the Dangerous Teleporter can only be obtained through the vending machines. Going back down and returning to the Principal's Office reunites you with the new NPC, urging you again to delete the game. Demo Style is a demo of Baldi's Basics Plus in the original school but with Plus features like math machines (some of which are impossible in this version) and random events. Again, there is an alternate ending by recompleting every math machine after completing them all a first time, with Baldi chasing you at his fastest. You're then given a portal to use on a specific wall to go into the basement, where the new NPC reappears and introduces himself as Null, again trying to prevent you from playing the game. Completing any of the game modes with all of the Fun Settings - Mirror Mode, Lights Out Mode, and Hard More - turned on unlocks Null Mode. In Null Mode, you don't answer questions, and Null starts hunting you after the second notebook, moving without sound and faster than Baldi but turning the world dark around him. After collecting all the notebooks, you fight Null, having infinite stamina to run and throw ten items at Null to defeat him as he breaks windows, blocks paths, and runs faster and faster. Doing so will teleport you to outside mystman12's office, with a notebook thanking the player and noting that there is no lore to solve. Null glitches himself out of the game and is gone, finishing the final ending. Recompleting Null Mode replaces him with a Baldloon, and any alternate ending doesn't include him, but Baldi instead.
Thafnine concludes by praising mystman12 for not milking his product, as only Plus costs money, before leading into the credits.
