Baby Steps Invokes the Spirit of QWOP With A Manual Walking Sim

A recent Baby Steps demo left me with several questions. Why am I doing this? Why has this developer given me this seemingly Sisyphean task? And why is the main character caked up like a freshly stocked bakery?

All valid queries, I feel, and it’s no surprise that Baby Steps comes from punishment extraordinaire Bennett Foddy. While he’s joined by Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch following their work on Ape Out, this feels like a natural successor to Foddy’s earlier hits, notably QWOP and Getting Over It. It’s a punishing hiking game with manual leg movement, only this time we’ve left two-dimensional confines for a fully 3D world.

After being teleported away to a distant location, sentient onesie-wearing ragdoll Nate finds himself tasked with hiking up a mountain for reasons I don’t completely understand. This is one of the most infuriating games I’ve played in a long time, yet that challenge keeps me motivated to keep trying.

As a manual walking sim, you don’t use analog stick movement to navigate this barely treacherous (so far) mountain. Instead, moving each leg is reliant on pressing your gamepad’s triggers, and that takes time to get used to. A longer press means a longer stretch, and a greater chance of falling over. Nate will not hesitate to ragdoll at a moment’s notice, potentially losing minutes of progress as you slide down.

For me, I can handle more frustrating mechanics if there’s some form of trade-off, and Baby Steps certainly has that; it’s absolutely hysterical. My moment of irritation as I tried crossing a small bridge only to fall into the stream beneath was eased by the fact that Nate looks pathetically hilarious as it happens, showing a surprising amount of cake on the way. There’s no time limit here, though I could feel myself getting more determined each time.

It’s an interesting deconstruction of gameplay mechanics we often take for granted because, well, why wouldn’t we expect walking to just work? This is an activity playable characters just do and have done since the earliest days of video games. I’m reminded of Manual Samuel, Perfectly Paranormal’s adventure, where you need to keep manually breathing to get through the day.

Baby Steps is a walking simulator in the most literal sense, and one that the easily annoyed probably won’t enjoy. The demo’s palpable frustration will immediately tell you whether or not Baby Steps is for you. It relies on your persistence, your patience and frankly, that sense of infuriation is only driving me to come back.

I could see this being a fun speedrunning game, and Baby Steps arrives on Steam and PS5 on September 8.