Baby Steps
Baby Steps is infuriating.
A third-person walking simulator in the most literal sense of the word, Baby Steps is an open-world exploration game from Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy, and it is meant to mess with you. You control a 35-year-old onesie-wearing doofus named Nate, and for some reason, Nate can’t do anything on his own–including walking. Each of the triggers on your controller picks up one of Nate’s feet, while the left analog stick controls how he leans. So you press a trigger to pick up a foot, lean forward with the stick, and put it down. One step. Then you pick up the other foot with the other trigger, lean forward with the stick, and put it down. Another step. Mess up any of these operations and you’ll overbalance Nate, who will flop over and slam into the ground like a fish tossed onto the deck of a boat.
Then you do that again and again. To climb a mountain.
Yes, this can be irritating. It is also very funny, in more ways than one. Watching Nate tumble off a cliff or barrel down a muddy river is excellently ridiculous. What makes Baby Steps brilliant is that it is consistently making fun of you. But not just you–itself, too. And not just you and itself, but the very concept of video games, as it asks what, exactly, is it about our stupid brains that makes us insist on doing this to ourselves?
Baby Steps is a game that goofs on you for picking up a controller in the first place, but it does so from a place of love. With its excellent performances and ludicrous world and characters, it is, also, a joy to explore–while also being designed so well that it is fun to play at the same time as being excruciating. It’s a game that reminds you not to take the demand to “get gud” quite so seriously, while being ruthless–and hilarious. — Phil Hornshaw
