Not two hours into my trek through Baby Steps, an open world physics comedy published by Devolver Digital, I walked by a pit. The discovery came just after I’d finally worked up enough skills to keep my character upright long enough to walk in short, straight lines without faceplanting. The pit was clearly a trap. It was designed for me to fall into, but I laughed in its face. I skirted around it with confidence, leaving it in my rearview mirror as I began a hike up a rocky mountain ahead. Did they really think they were going to get me with that one?
30 minutes later, now halfway to the top, I tried to cross a narrow gap on a short outcropping. I completely beefed it, sending me tumbling off the cliff and wiping out half an hour of progress. The kicker? The slip-up occurred directly above the pit. My character fell perfectly inside, landing flat on his back, staring up at the sky for a few seconds, groaning.
Everything you need to know about Baby Steps exists in that moment. No game is as flush with setups and punchlines, doling out perfect pratfalls at the same rate as payoffs. It’s a slapstick adventure of disappointments that dares you to take risks so you can inevitably slip up and let the wave of embarrassment wash over you like a beached tuna at low tide. And the spectacular failures only make it all the more empowering when you dust yourself, get back on your two feet, and keep moving.
A collaboration between Ape Out creators Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy (the latter of whom is responsible for the viral hit QWOP), Baby Steps puts a basement-dwelling manchild at the center of a grand adventure that he is in no way prepared for. In the midst of a Netflix binge, the onesie-clad mooch is teleported to a mysterious world pulled straight out of an Elder Scrolls game. The first of many laugh-out-loud moments hits the second you try to take your first step: pressing the joystick forward causes our hero to unceremoniously faceplant. In order to keep him upright, you need to put one foot in front of the other by alternating taps on your left and right trigger, each one controlling a respective leg. You’ll need to do that a lot as you embark on an unexpectedly grand hike in search of a way home. Or to at least find a good place to piss.
Also, you may or may not need to pick up some cigarettes along the way for a gaggle of donkey men with enormous, swinging dicks. But let’s come back to that one.
If any game deserves the moniker of “walking simulator,” it’s Baby Steps. Your goal is just to walk, whether it be up the side of a mountain, over a twisted mine cart track, or through a maze of cardboard boxes. And I mean really walk. Movement is a clumsy process that makes you feel like a toddler at all times. When I’m first learning how to move, I can barely get myself upright. I eventually learn how to take one step before tumbling over. That step turns into a short walk, with my body weight carrying my momentum forward before I splat on the ground. By the end of my journey, I’m not only able to walk without falling, but I have learned to make my way up steep slopes with the right angling, carefully scale crags, and balance on a log as it bounces around in a river’s current.
Getting to that point requires a lot of failure, and that’s where Baby Steps sees an opportunity for devilish comedy. The world may look empty, but it’s densely populated with the kind of environmental traps that would torture Wile E. Coyote for the rest of his natural-born life. I dare to step out onto a precarious overlook after reaching the top of my first arduous climb only to – you guessed it – fall off thanks to one bad foot placement. I struggle to get up a slippery stairwell made of sand only to discover some cacti dotting the narrow path at the top. I try to grab a zipline to make it across a chasm, but it’s just enough out of reach that I topple into the stream below instead. It’s like Home Alone’s Kevin McCallister designed a video game.
There’s a version of this that could come off as nothing more than an interactive shitpost meant to earn virality through Twitch clips of overacting streamers raging out after a big fall, the man on screen slowly sliding down a mountain ass first. After all, Bennett Foddy is no stranger to that kind of success thanks to QWOP and Getting Over it, both of which serve as the foundation for this project alongside Death Stranding. But during my 12-hour playthrough, Baby Steps captivated me more than any other game I’ve played this year. I couldn’t put it down. Some nights, I found that I had gripped my Steam Deck so tightly that my palms began to hurt. I’d spend hours sliding down the same muddy hill, only to stay up past my bedtime to keep failing. And all of that was coming from me, a guy who feels like he’s wasting his life if a Soulslike boss takes more than 30 minutes to beat.
So, what makes Baby Steps’ frustrations so magnetic? Maybe it’s a testament to the fantastic world that the team built here. It feels like I’m in a 3D version of Getting Over It’s surreal trash world. An outhouse dangles on the lip of a cliff. I march through a sandcastle kingdom, an impossible labyrinth hidden away inside. Every landscape looks like a Salvador Dalí painting. The sounds of Maxi Boch’s unorthodox score makes every sight feel even more hypnotic, as bird calls and insect buzzing morph into complex percussion when I’m least expecting it.
Baby Steps is very much about masculinity in a way that few video games care about
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so goddamn funny. The visual gags already make it one of the best video game comedies I’ve ever played, but the interstitial cutscenes that pop out throughout my quest are downright riotous. I cross paths with a cast of local eccentrics along the way, from a cocky climber who is running circles around me to an ever-present groundskeeper who is a little too eager to check in on my progress. Most, if not all, of them are voiced by the game’s creators, who can’t help but crack themselves up during hysterically uncomfortable conversations between our mumbling hero and the fast-talking weirdos that won’t let him pee in peace. It has the energy of both a Samuel Beckett play and a Seth Rogen-led stoner comedy in one.
As strong as all of those elements are, the most compelling thing about Baby Steps is its unlikely hero. If I’ve been a little vague about him so far, that’s because he’s meant to be a forgettable guy. When we meet him, he’s passed out on a couch as his parents argue on a different floor about what to do with him. My instinct is to laugh at his expense as his atrophied muscles give out on him at the worst possible moments. He’s a perfect punching bag.
But I begin to feel for him the longer the trek goes. A heartbreaking line of dialogue midway through the story changes the way I see him, revealing a layer of insecurity and self-hatred that hangs over him. That moment just so happens to line up with the point where the game’s difficulty rockets up. I imagine that many players will decide to quit at that point, giving up on him as he lies face down in a river that endlessly circles in on itself.
Wait. I should probably get back to that part about the donkey dicks.
Baby Steps is very much about masculinity in a way that few video games care about despite often starring macho men. Our awkward, out-of-shape hero isn’t exactly the ideal male image — a fact that is literally dangled in his face every time he bumps into a donkey man, who has their whole hog swinging out there like a grandfather clock’s pendulum. His only stereotypically masculine trait is that he can’t bring himself to ask for help or accept it when offered. (We perhaps get gaming’s all-time great running gag here as he repeatedly turns down anyone who tries to give him a map.)
That context turns Baby Steps from an irreverent physics comedy into a sincere dissection of manhood and the societal pressures it creates. It’s a game about feeling inadequate, but not knowing how to express it. Every misstep is another disappointment that doesn’t just set back your progress towards the ending, but any hope that our hero can grow too.
In one of the game’s few unreasonable choke points, I’m tasked with getting out of that circular river I mentioned earlier. It’s a low point, as there are only two viable ways to get out that are both very easy to screw up. Doing so drops you into the current and forces you to sail all the way back around to dry land, all while avoiding buggy geometry that can send you through the map. You see the same setup and punchline play out countless times, killing the design joke as the failures stack up. I was stuck here for hours. I could either try to escape via an unreliable log bridge or a twisted minecart track.
The latter felt impossible. While I could cross a few tracks with careful balance, the last one I’d need to get through was blocked by a cart still on the rails. My only options were to either shimmy alongside a narrow edge — which didn’t seem possible due to my character’s big stomach bumping up against the cart — or to side step onto another rail. I didn’t even bother trying the second option. It wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t do it; I believed my character couldn’t. All the failures had gotten to me and I’d lost patience with him, branding him a lost cause who didn’t have the coordination needed to survive this world.
Hours of desperation went by. I eventually cracked and figured I’d try to make that dangerous step, expecting to fall into the river below. I stretched a leg out carefully, placed it on the rail, and quickly pulled my other leg over. He executed it perfectly, making me feel like the asshole for refusing to trust him. After that, I never doubted him again as I marched towards victory.
That moment gave me that fabled rush that Dark Souls players feed off of. I’ve never really felt it myself in those kinds of games. Sure, it’s good for some serotonin the first few times I beat a hard boss in a game, but all those pats on the back start to feel obnoxious, like I’m being coddled by a game that wants me to feel like a good boy because I can practice pattern recognition. The brilliance of Baby Steps is in the way it takes that sensation and externalizes it. Each time I take a risk that ends in success, it feels like I’ve done something to help build our hero’s confidence. It’s about him, not me and my stupid avatar I spent 10 minutes thoughtlessly creating.
Baby Steps is meant to infuriate you. It’s designed to test your patience with deviously placed setbacks that will eat up an entire session’s worth of progress with no remorse. You’ll laugh. You’ll swear. You’ll probably quit at least once. But if you see it through to the end, you’ll find prizes waiting for you that are more powerful than any cool sword: grace, compassion, and a good place to piss.
Baby Steps is out now on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on Steam Deck using a prerelease download code provided by Devolver Digital. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
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