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Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
If you only play one Steam Next Fest Demo, make sure it's Baby Steps
If you play a lot of games, you've probably heard the term 'walking simulator' before. It's generally a backhanded term used to describe games that don't have much interactivity beyond walking around and interacting with things. If you picture a game like Gone Home anytime you see those two words together, I'm going to need you to go ahead and wipe that incorrect image from your brain right now. That's not a walking simulator. I'll show you a real walking simulator. Take a look at Baby Steps. Set to launch later this year for PC and PS5, Baby Steps is the latest project from developers Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy. That last name should strike fear in your heart, as that's the creator behind cult hits like QWOP and Getting Over It, two games that turn basic movement into a physics nightmare. Baby Steps is a continuation of that thinking, creating an open-world slapstick comedy about learning to walk one step at a time. You can try a demo of it now as part of Steam Next Fest and I urge you to do so as soon as possible. It might just be the ultimate magnum opus for one of the most maddening minds in gaming. Recommended Videos One foot in front of the other The demo wastes no time setting up an elegant story that needs little introduction. A camera swoops through a house as two adults argue about what seems like their kid. We land on a basement-dwelling adult, laid out on his parents' couch midway through a One Piece binge. One remote click later, they are suddenly whisked away into another world far from their bickering folks. It's the start of a grand adventure for a mooch dropped into a fantasy world. Or it would be if they could get this whole 'walking' thing down. As soon as I gain control of the adult baby in question, I realize that the developers have basically made a big budget QWOP. I press a button to move forwards and immediately fall over like a ragdoll. The controls tell me that I need to control each foot as I walk, gradually moving one in front of the other. That's easier said than done. I stumble my way through a muddy straightway as I try to figure out how exactly to remain standing. After a few pratfalls, I begin to carefully hold my balance with very slow and careful steps. I am essentially a giant toddler learning to walk for the first time. It doesn't take long for me to get the target of that joke. After meeting an NPC and engaging in a genuinely hilarious bit of dialogue where my character mumbles his way through an awkward encounter, the world ahead of me opens up. The goal of my demo is simply to get up to walk up a hill and get to a bonfire. As you have probably surmised by now, that is easier said than done. No longer able to simply walk in a straight line, I set out on a perilous journey that requires me to walk up steps, cross over thin planks of wood, and avoid teetering off a cliff into a muddy abyss. If you're familiar with Getting Over It, Bennett Foddy's infamous game about a man in a pot climbing a mountain, this should all sound familiar. Baby Steps is basically an open-world version of that game. At one point I decide to go off the beaten path and see how far I can get. It's all going well until I take a narrow walkway too fast and go flying off the cliff, destroying 30 minutes worth of progress. I felt anguished for just a moment before dusting myself off and getting back on my feet. When I do that, I become more determined to improve. Within an hour, I become significantly more skilled at walking. I'm falling over less and my pace begins to speed up. By the end of the demo, I'm able to walk up a staircase without issue. It all culminates in a small victory where I use some clever footholds to get up to the bonfire after initially deeming it impossible to scale when I first get there. I'm still moving like a baby, but one who no longer needs parents hovering around them every time they move. In that way, Baby Steps feels like the friendliest version of what I'll call Foddy's walking trilogy. QWOP is a brilliant bit of slapstick that's meant to be stumbled through. Getting Over It teaches players to embrace failure amid a Sisyphean quest. Baby Steps feels more achievable than both. It wants players to build up their skill slowly, gaining more and more confidence with each obstacle tackled. I can already sense that I'll be able to power walk with ease eventually. In that way, it could be the most realistic walking simulator ever. When I finished my demo, I wished I could keep playing. I felt like I was just finding my (literal) footing and working up to a successful sprint. At least I'll be ready for the full release now, as I plan to speedrun that opening walkway. Baby Steps launches later this year for PS5 and PC. A demo is available for Steam Next Fest.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Baby Steps preview: Serious gameplay in a silly walking sim
Baby Steps is a video game about hiking. This is, of course, a ridiculous concept. Before we get to the game's protagonist, an adult toddler in a thin onesie, or its unserious side characters and nonsensical narrative, we have to acknowledge the absurdity at its very core. Leisurely walking around in nature is perhaps the most organic, least technological activity a person can engage in, and the desire to digitize this experience, recreating it for consumption from the butt-shaped cushions of your couch, is silly. It's such a patently Game Developer™ impulse that, actually, I find it adorable. Much like the rest of Baby Steps. Baby Steps is a walking simulator from a trio of veteran game developers: Dance Central creator Maxi Boch, Ape Out developer Gabe Cuzzillo, and Bennett Foddy of QWOP and Getting Over It fame. It's heading to PC and PlayStation 5 this year, and since its announcement video dropped in June 2023, it's been a hotly anticipated curio for fans of annoyingly precise traversal mechanics and offbeat indie shit. It's a larger audience than you might think. I played about 45 minutes of Baby Steps at GDC 2025 while Boch, Cuzzillo and Foddy looked on and intermittently told me how good I was at walking. The game stars Nate, an unemployed adult dude who lives in his parents' basement, as he explores an arid mountain landscape one shaky, unsure step at a time. Maneuvering his body in the proper way is the main goal, and it's a tricky one. Using a gamepad, you control Nate's legs individually, one per trigger, and his limbs are incredibly sensitive to small changes in button depression. Pull a trigger tight to lift and bend one of his knees, and release it bit by bit to swing out his lower leg and place his foot precisely where it needs to be. Press forward with the left stick to give Nate just the right amount of momentum, get your trigger rhythm right, and suddenly, hey, you're walking here. It sounds easier than it is. Thanks to the game's incredibly precise mechanics, Nate falls over easily, faceplanting in the dirt and tumbling backward over rocky slopes like a ragdoll, covering his grey onesie in mud and sweat. This same precision also makes Nate shockingly sturdy at times, like when he pulls his whole body onto a ledge with a single step, ending in a perfectly balanced flamingo stance. There's room in the controls for both mastery and mayhem, and by the time I put down the gamepad, I was walking Nate around with all the grace of a perfectly adequate five-year-old. I was proud of this accomplishment, too, damn it. Literally placing one foot in front of the other requires so much concentration in the game's first few minutes that it's easy to ignore Nate's surroundings, but as walking becomes easier, you're finally able to look around and ask, 'What the hell am I doing here?' The first two chapters of Baby Steps are set on a mountainside dotted with craggy rocks, patches of brown grass, long-abandoned wooden buildings, random carousel horses and dirt pits, and the only indication of where to go is an orange glow emanating from a ridgeline high above Nate's spawn point. The few folks Nate meets along the way — a charmingly aloof guide and at least one other, much more prepared hiker — are incredibly entertaining to interact with, but they're also pretty unhelpful with existential questions. Nate murmurs and monosyllabizes his way through conversations, and he tends to get cut off by the NPCs' eager observations. Like when I was playing, Nate fell and got stuck at the bottom of a muddy hole, and his guide friend showed up and immediately said, 'This hole used to be dry. Hey, did you pee in the hole? Did you pee in this hole?' In response, Nate made anxious noises and generally panicked. The comedy in Baby Steps is sharp and chaotic, with a delirious, improvised edge. Foddy does the voice work for most of the characters, and he tends to just make up their lines at the mic. The result is a messy yet refreshing conversational flow, and every cutscene I encountered made me chuckle. Most aspects of Baby Steps made me smile, in fact. At one point I entered a fast-walking groove while wandering along a rocky path on the edge of the canyon, and I realized the birdsong and the thuds of my own steps had morphed into a rhythmic song, encouraging my gait with a steady, organic beat. The game's soundscape comes courtesy of Boch, and it intentionally ebbs and flows according to the way you play the game. Combine this responsive, immersive soundtrack with the constant focus you have to keep on Nate's movements, and Baby Steps quickly becomes a hypnotic experience. The game's details only encourage this feeling — the mountain is strangely beautiful, rendered in crisp 3D graphics, and it's completely explorable, with no invisible walls in sight. If you can see it, you can attempt to climb it. Nate's onesie collects sweat along the small of his back, under his arms, and in all the crannies you'd expect, and it also picks up mud when he falls, but the stains wash away when you get in water. On-screen prompts are rare. There are hidden hats to wear and penis graffiti to admire, and Nate can take numerous paths to reach the same point, bouncing pancake butt leading the way. Behind all the absurdity, Baby Steps is an incredibly well-crafted, hyper-detailed relaxation tool. While it is laugh-out-loud funny, its mechanics cut deeper than its oddball trailers suggest, and in practice, it actually left me feeling meditative. Baby Steps is a serious silly game. Baby Steps is being published by Devolver Digital, and it's due to hit PS5 and PC via Steam later this year.
