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It’s obviously by design, but games like Baby Steps give me the irits. It’s a genuine walking simulator that, almost unbelievably, takes putting one foot in front of the other to exhausting extremes, and it makes a harrowing task out of simply getting around. But, as with all obtuse or difficult experiences, there’s the small dopamine hit that comes with finally, doing as Kate Bush sang about, running up that hill. If you thought some of the minor inclines, or rocky passes, in Death Stranding had you locking your ankles up, Baby Steps will leave you unceremoniously dumped at the foot of a muddy embankment, with a battered spirit and battered, full man-sized bodysuit to match.
Although the title might conjure a certain impression, you’re anything but a baby in Baby Steps. You play as the hopeless Nate, a man child who is drawn into strange land after disappearing from the couch in his parents’ basement. The game’s initial conceit and the central gameplay loop go toe-to-toe in the oddness stakes, however, the theme of flying the coop, so to speak, and finding independence through quite literally putting one foot in front of the other is a straightforward one.
Baby Steps is a fever dream from beginning to end. After waking in a mysterious land, you waddle from one gauntlet to the next, each more infuriating than the last. As you make it to each campsite, which gives the same, relieving sense of safety as a Dark Souls bonfire, truth be told, you’re greeted by some of the quirkiest characters I’ve ever met in a game. From tweaking ocker mountaineers to big, dick swinging—and I mean that quite literally—mules, it’s a bizarre, almost constant, lapse in logic and realism, it’s like The Neverending Story if it were made for those who are chronically online.
The game itself really does show all of its cards early as you control each of Nate’s feet with its respective shoulder button, while using the stick to control the depth of each lunge. From a pick up and play perspective, I do think Baby Steps is far more accessible than other games that tackle a more “full body” layered approach to its control scheme. Keeping a steady stride up through a flat field soon becomes second nature, and even ascending a gentle staircase can become trivial before too long. However, it’s the inevitable battle between Nate’s careful, pitter-pattering steps and tougher terrains that creates the crux of Baby Steps’ adversity.
Having endured more than enough soggy winters in some of Australia’s more rural parts, I’m no stranger to mud. In Baby Steps, an innocuous mud slick has potential to be the game’s greatest villain, and a single mislaid step can send you sliding down, down, down. But, like all games that are punishing by nature, there’s learning to be taken away with each failure. Whether it’s the understanding of where you went wrong, or the acceptance that you simply can’t make it up that embankment, your failures are a big part of the journey.
The readability of the game’s terrain became a big factor in strategising the optimal path through, and there are plenty of textures to contend with—map, sand, mossy rock, and so many more. Like a good caddie, your proficiency for reading the camber of the path ahead will ultimately prove to be the difference and, as much as I grit my teeth and quietly seethe after watching Nate starfish desperately on his back as he slides to the great below, it’s part of the fun.
For the first few beats, it was generally easy to spot your destination on the horizon line, this soon changed and I found my ascent became kind of muddled and aimless. Of course, exploration is the aim of Baby Steps, but I did find it frustrating to beat my head against a wall, tackling some incline, only to discover I’d been turned around and had been going in the wrong direction. I’m not saying the game needed a map, per se, however, an pingable objective marker could have saved a headache or two.
Not that graphics are ever cutting edge in titles like Baby Steps, this game is kind of ugly. As comedy is a focus, the way it handles physics, and the general animation of Nate’s meandering steps, is wonderful, although you should expect several instances of the character model glitching out against obstacles as you find yourself wedged after a failed attempt to proceed—such is the nature of ragdoll. Beyond that, the world is a serviceable smear of grey and earthy tones. The journey itself might be memorable, but the world does little to contribute to that, however, it’s likely to satisfy players with an appetite for the weird and surreal. The entire cast of characters, Nate included, certainly look as though they’re plucked from a bygone era, with on-hinge mandibles flapping along to the dialogue and unblinking eyes. The one thing I did appreciate was Nate’s sleep suit and how it’d constantly serve as a canvas for the player’s failings with water and mud serving as the paint.
The sound design in Baby Steps is bizarre and, most certainly, contributed to it feeling otherworldly. With no score to speak of, the momentary insanity of scaling a mountainside is helped along by rhythmic, ambient environmental sounds. Slipping through a swamp early on to the on-beat ribbitts of a woodland’s frog gave Baby Steps an unexpected nature hike feeling that I found hard to shake. The voice acting is perhaps where the game feels at its absolute cheapest, and not just because the delivery is off-kilter but because the techniques used to make approaching characters seem further away resulted in echoed lines that sounded as though they’d been shouted from a linen cupboard.
Baby Steps, when it’s said and done, is a game that’s both easy to love and hate. More often than not, the central idea of being punished for one insignificant mistake, only to beat your head against the same wall, would drive me mad usually—and it still did here. So often I’d swear through my gritted teeth about how unfair it felt, but with a walking mechanic that’s both simple and accessible—at least when compared to other titles in the developers’ catalogue—I felt as though Baby Steps earned the inevitable “one more run walk” that’d follow.
