Baby Steps Review
Baby Steps is like Cilantro. You will ether love it or you’ll hate it because it tastes like soap, which in this case will be the taste of rage and frustration. There are no upgrades, no lives, no game over screen, no skill tree, no map, no waypoints. There is nothing but you, the mountain and physics. Baby Steps is a rage platformer, but no matter how many times you take a break or walk away in frustration, you always feel compelled to return
The big difference between earlier Foddy games is that Baby Steps isnt just about the gameplay. The destination is equally as important as the journey. The story initially appears to be quite infantile with dry sarcastic humour and gratuitous amounts of genitalia, but as the layers peel back, Baby Steps surprisingly reveals a narrative about deep seated trauma and trying to move past it. Finding closure became my primary motivation to get to the next cutscene and trying to understand if all the suffering had been worth it. Baby Steps is more than just a physics based rage platformer, it’s now it’s a complete package.
BABY STEPS REVIEW
In Baby Steps you play as Nate, a 35 year old freeloader who still lives in his parents basement and has convinced himself that he is doing them a favor. Nate plants himself on the couch all day eating junk food, watching tv and lacking motivation.
During his latest Netflix binge session, Nate has somehow been transported to another world in his onesie. It’s unclear if this is a fever dream or a bad trip, but whatever it is, Nate finds himself in the middle of the wilderness with no other option but to put one foot in front of the other. Nate has forgotten how to walk.
This is the unique selling point of Baby Steps as you need to navigate this treacherous world while relearning how to walk by taking baby steps. You control your left leg with the left trigger, your right leg with the right trigger and move forward with the thumb-stick. That’s it and while it might seem simple enough, Baby Steps makes full use of the analog triggers, along with the geometry and physics of the world, which make just taking consecutive steps a challenge. The world of Baby Steps is composed of many different environments types from grass to mud to rocks to sand to snow and even ice, all of which will require a different walking tempo to find success.
Baby Steps is a physics based platformer just like Foddy’s previous game QWOP and Getting Over It, which means there is going to be a lot of failure and a lot of progress that gets erased in the blink of an eye. Something as simple as placing your foot an inch too far or slightly leaning too much in one direction could be what makes the difference between success and losing thirty minutes of progress.
Baby Steps is constantly testing your patience and you will walk away numerous times, but you will always return because the gratification of overcoming something that seemed unsurmountable at one point isn’t that different from the feeling that fromsoftware games provide. It’s the same punishing and borderline masochistic experience, but instead of Father Gascoigne, Starscourge Radahn, or Malenia it’s mud, sandy stairs and mossy rocks.
There are few quality of life inclusions that make Baby Steps palatable to a wider crowd than most rage platformers. Even though Baby Steps has no hard checkpoints, you will usually be able to find a plateau in between large legs of the journey that serve as a stopping point should you lose your footing and an area that you won’t slide past. Another major reason is that there is usually two or three different paths to take. There will usually be the most obvious one, but with a little exploration you are likely to discover a few more. They won’t necessarily be easier, but they will be different and usually you will find a path that aligns with your strengths.
As rewarding as the gameplay can be at times and how much fun streamers and speed runners will have with it, what kept me engaged was the meaning of Baby Steps. It was about more than just getting to the top of the metaphorical mountain by putting one foot in front of the other.
Baby Steps is a deep allegory about the conditioning over time that has the power to shape who we are and what it takes to overcome, no matter how awkward it feels to step outside of your comfort zone. This story gets relayed to you mainly through cutscenes, but also through items in the environment if you look around and explore. Just like Dickens Christmas Carol, Nate digs into the past, present and future moments of his subconscious, even down to having Jiminy Cricket along the journey with you serving as your conscience and voice of reason.
However, even if you have no interest in unpacking the symbolism and stereotypes of Baby Steps or what the greater meaning of the experience is, the gameplay is enough to keep most people entertained as you move from one challenge and environment to the next, but it’s going to be best to pace yourself over the10-12 hour journey. As with most difficult things in life, sometimes what’s really needed is a little break. If you want to venture off the beaten path, there are plenty of hidden secrets to find and extreme challenges to overcome as well.
CRITICISMS
Baby Steps is the first game, to my recollection, that I have gone to the audio settings to not only turn the music down, but to completely turn it off. I personally found the music didn’t serve any purpose other than to add extra anxiety and stress to situations that were already overflowing with tension.
Baby Steps is also not a looker, especially during the cutscenes, which as mentioned offered reflective moments, but the facial animations are not of this generation didn’t offer much value to the emotional weight of the scenes. However visuals and audio arent typically the reason you come to a Foddy game
When Nate would slip or fall, it would be frustrating enough, but often times he embellishes, which makes matter worse and turn a small problem into a big one as you tumble much farther than you feel you should’ve. In one of the later levels, Nate is given something to hold to help with his journey, but when he falls, rather than hold it, he slingshots it across the room, which often complicates the matter. Nate also falls a lot as you would expect and adding in a few more screams, groans and lines of despair would have went a long way.
IS BABY STEPS WORTH IT?
In Skyrim, the promise was made that if you could see the mountain, you could climb it. Baby Steps takes this premise one step further as you literally climb the mountain one foot at a time with no markers, yellow paint or assistance. Baby Steps is very difficult, but fair and by the end of the game it becomes second nature as you begin to see the world like Neo. At a certain point everything clicks into place and you begin to see the matrix.
At face value, Baby Steps is nothing more than mundane tasks such as walking across a bridge or even along a pathway, but as Nate says at one point during the game, the experience is actually a crucible of the mind. As much as Baby Steps is about your dexterity with the controller, it’s twice as much about how well you can deal with adversity and show resiliency to keep going. The gameplay isn’t likely to surprise and will absolutely please those who are specifically coming for it, but the story of Baby Steps stole the show with an unexpectedly poignant journey about the human condition. If there was ever a quintessential rage platformer, Baby Steps would be it.
